User reviews

Frank Perry's screen adaptation of the achingly sad John Cheever short story gets the tone of Cheever's story just right, even if the movie itself doesn't have quite the same impact.

There have been countless strong and powerful films made around the theme of suburban loneliness, and this movie belongs to that genre. There's something so poignant about the idea that someone can exist in a world that's manufactured for the sole purpose of providing its inhabitants with luxury, pleasure and convenience, and still be miserable. You'd think people would have gotten the point by now, and figured out that privilege, wealth and materialism have virtually nothing to do with ultimate happiness, but if our own consumerist culture is any indication, they haven't.

What helps "The Swimmer" to stand out from other similarly-themed films is the way the story is told. It's only through the reactions of others that we begin to sense what's wrong with Burt Lancaster's character. To us, he looks the picture of middle-aged robustness and health. Lancaster became a much better actor as he aged, and he gives a wonderful performance here, as his bravado and macho virility (the strutting and preening of a man on top of the world) slowly dissolves into a lost insecurity, until the film's final devastating moments leave him as forlorn as a baby.

What a sad, sad movie.

Grade: A-

Judging by the comments here, apparently I'm not the only one who was incredibly moved by this masterpiece--a masterpiece of storytelling on Cheever's part, that is, and a more than passable film portrayal of what one might call "the perfect short story." If HBO had existed in the 1960s, and Rod Serling had written for it, this is what "Twilight Zone" might have looked like: a tangled, twisted terrain of the human psyche that leads to the deepest of our fears--and the most profound of our hopes. The stakes for Ned Merrill, as we come to discover, are about as high as they can be for any character not caught in a literal life and death struggle. But he might as well be, judging by the size and fearsomeness of the phantoms that haunt his way. For this reason I think I'd say that other than *Glengarry Glen Ross,* this is the most terrifying film ever made.

In contrast to many others, however, I don't think Ned is delusional: I think he's spent so long believing his own publicity, as it were, that he hasn't fully accepted what has happened to him. (And of course, "what has happened to him" is almost entirely of his own making, which makes his predicament all the more painful because it seems to offer no hope of redemption.) And he's clearly one of those hail-fellow-well-met types who, when he promises he's going to do something for someone--as he continually does in the movie, right up to the point where he promises to pay his bill to a local proprietor--he truly means it, at least in the moment.

Additionally, "The Swimmer" seems like far too profound a work to tie it to themes as dreary and shopworn as the emptiness of suburban life or the dark side of the American dream. Granted, a great deal of powerful literature, dating back at least to Nathanael West's *Day of the Locust*, has been written around the second of these ideas, but "The Swimmer" seems to speak to something much deeper, a haunted place in the human soul. In the ads for the movie--which, in sharp contrast to the brilliant development of the story itself, attempted to lay out all the details in a way at once pedantic and almost pandering (as previews in those days tended to be), a voice-over asks if the viewer might see Ned in him- or herself.

*The Swimmer* is an epic, but an unusual one. Not because of the small scale and the deceptively trivial-seeming stakes involved it the epic journey--that's an idea Joyce introduced years earlier in *Ulysses*--but because of that journey's destination. Ned isn't going toward a new land, but back--back to nothing short of Eden. And if it's an epic, then he's a hero of sorts, and not entirely an antihero either. After all, even with all the things you learn about him along the way, it's hard not to root for Ned Merrill.

I still have dreams where I'm at summer camp; 10 years old and running through the woods. The sun barely breaks through the thick forest canopy. There is no way for me to recapture that feeling in my adult life. No backpacking trip in a national park or well-planned vacation to an unspoiled beach can provide it. This is the problem of privilege: What seems to be a gift is really a loan. We spend the rest of our lives paying back this debt. This movie is fantastic. Burt Lancaster is the man. If you are a film fan and an American and you have not yet seen this film, then be careful! Save this one for a rainy day because you won't find many more like it. It's about living in the past, in a dream of what the present should be. It's about a privileged, womanizing, self-obsessed middle aged man who comes up with a plan to swim home that is clear only to him. "Why would you want to do that?", people keep asking him. Watch this movie alone and then don't talk to anyone about it. Keep it secret. Let it fuel you.

John Cheever's short story of 1964 is his most anthologised and here Eleanor Perry, wife of director Frank, has achieved the feat of expanding its twelve pages into a film of ninety five minutes. Cheever's prose is meticulous of course but the tale itself is relatively uneventful and the participants insubstantial so that plenty of fleshing out of episodes and characters has been required, even to the point of adding a few!

Two of the additions are Julie played by newcomer Janet Lindgard who admits to having had a teenage crush on the Ned Merrill of Burt Lancaster but then repulses his advances. The other is the boy Kevin of Michael Kearney with whom Ned 'swims' the length of an empty pool. It is during this scene that Ned utters the crucial words that provide a key to his character:"if you make believe hard enough that something is true, then it is true for you."

We never discover the nature of Ned's 'misfortune' and what has caused his fall from grace although it is hinted at by various characters throughout his aquatic odyssey across the quasi-subterranean string of swimming pools that lead to his home. In believing that his previously affluent life has not changed is he suffering from the ultimate self-deception or has he had a mental breakdown? It is both fitting and ironic that the grim reality of his situation is brought home to him not in the private pools of his social set but by some distinctly unpleasant people in the public swimming baths.

The most telling encounter is that of Ned and a former lover Shirley Abbott played by Janice Rule. What is the briefest of exchanges in the original story has been developed here into one of the bitterest scenes between male and female on film. Ned approaches her with great optimism but his hopes are soon dashed when she lashes out at him for his selfishness and thoughtlessness which leads to his self-pitying lament "we are all going to die."

Could this be the true meaning of Cheever's story I wonder and is this simply an allegory for the ageing process? At the opening of the story Ned is described by Cheever as resembling 'the last hours of a summer's day.' As his journey progresses his stamina is sapped, he feels chilly and his bones begin to ache. I trust it is not too fanciful to see in this the inevitable decline from glorious summer, through the sere and yellow leaf of autumn to the winter of discontent. Just a theory of course.

What is certain however is that this is one of Mr. Lancaster's finest performances and interesting to learn that prior to making this, not only was he unable to swim, he suffered from aquaphobia!

This curious picture which could never break out from the art houses is one where Burt Lancaster gives a fine performance, maybe one of his best. The type of story that this is based on is one however that does not translate easily to the screen and the overall results are less than the top.

The Swimmer is based on a John Cheever short story and it's about a man who decides while visiting friends at one end of Fairfield County to swim in all the pools that the folks in his rich set have built on the way home. As he visits each home bit by bit we learn about him and the results in the end show a man quite frankly at the end of his rope.

Burt Lancaster probably was uniquely qualified to play Neddy Merrill. He was 54 when he made The Swimmer, but Lancaster who started out as a circus acrobat always kept himself in good physical shape. By the time he made The Swimmer he had the acting chops as well as the physical appearance to pull off the part.

More from the reaction shots of the people around him although their dialog becomes more and more explicit as time goes on, we learn about Lancaster's fall from grace in the set. He was a man who had achieved the American dream, wife, two daughters, big home in the fanciest of suburbs. But that's all fallen apart for him as bit by bit of his life and character are revealed. The last shots of Lancaster as he achieves this goal tell you all how worthless the swim trip has been.

Lancaster's best scenes are with young Michael Kearney as he tells him being the best early on won't necessarily translate to the good life. Also with Janet Landgard who was 'introduced' in this film after playing Paul Petersen's girlfriend on the Donna Reed Show. She was a beautiful young woman, wonder whatever happened to her.

We also cannot forget that encounter with his former mistress Janice Rule. She really cuts him down to size, but shows pangs of regret doing it. You also get a good picture of Lancaster's wife who is never seen who must have been obsessed with keeping up with the rich Jones that hang out in her neighborhood. His wife and kids must have sucked the life out of him.

The Swimmer was not a film for the mass market and parts of it are better than others. It starts out actually quite dull, but picks up more and more as you reach a shattering climax. Definitely an unusual assignment for Burt Lancaster.

This movie is not for everyone, but everyone I know who's seen it admits that it's one-of-a-kind. Burt Lancaster is flat-out powerful in the lead, as the man who decides one day to swim his way through his neighbors' pools to his home. As he makes his way pool by pool we learn more and more about Burt's real character. A kaleidoscopic study of how we see ourselves, versus how others see us. One of my favorites, please give this movie a shot.

On a glorious summer Sunday in Connecticut, buff Burt Lancaster (as Ned "Neddy" Merrill) finds himself separated from his suburban home, clad in only swimming trunks. He decides to "swim home," going from pool to pool. As it turns out, Mr. Lancaster knows all the residents in the area. And, each swimming pool brings him closer to his destination. At first, it seems like smooth sailing - but, evidently, not everyone is happy to see Lancaster. Each property reveals a little more about "The Swimmer", who may be psychologically unraveling in middle-aged angst. When his journey ends, you may be in for a surprise. Or, you may not.

****** The Swimmer (5/15/68) Frank Perry ~ Burt Lancaster, Janice Rule, Janet Landgard, Michael Kearney

I have read most of John Cheever's short stories including "The Swimmer". Like all of his writing, it's beautifully crafted, and as always, a joy to read. While not surprised that Hollywood would want to film this story I avoided seeing it when it first came out forty odd years ago, mainly because I didn't believe it was the kind of story that would translate successfully to celluloid. After sitting down and watching it on DVD, I still think I am right. I am at a loss to understand why "The Swimmer" didn't succeed as a film. Maybe the problem lies with the screenplay. The writer has added two characters that are not in the original story. I can understand why the writer hoped to add a little 'meat' to an already 'thin' story with the addition of these characters. Unfortunately, all this does is slow the tempo of the film down to a snail's pace. The first distraction is when Ned Merrill meets a former babysitter of his. Ned persuades her to join him in his quest to "swim home" So for a time, we are treated to multiple scenes of Ned and the babysitter casually strolling through the woods. The other diversion is when Ned meets up with a small boy playing the recorder while hoping someone will come along and buy his homemade lemonade. This scene is even more maudlin than the one with the babysitter. Then again, the director I feel, was out of his depth when he set about filming this story. Technically, the film is a bit of a dog's dinner. Some scenes are plainly out of focus. The editing is too jerky. The continuity is appalling. Some shots are even repeated. The sight lines seem all wrong, somehow. As for the music by Marvin Hamlisch, it's pure Hollywood schmaltz. The whole premise underpinning "The Swimmer" is one of exigency, not torpor. Ned Merrill, in the book, has but one thing on his mind, and that's to accomplish what he set out to do as quickly as he can which is why Neddy eschews engaging in idle chatter with the folks he encounters poolside to the point of appearing rude. The saving grace in this film is the performance by Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill. Like in the story, Burt Lancaster portrays Ned Merrill as a man who radiates confidence while at the same time is plainly in self-denial. Sadly, for this viewer, Frank Perry's version of "The Swimmer" has ended up dead in the water.

The Swimmer is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. The story is simple but unusual. A successful executive - Ned Merrill - (in the end we realize that this is not quite so), in a psychological trance, imagine being in a time before the real and decides to "go home", the metaphor that supports the film. His return happens in a planned way, passing by the pools of his friends and acquaintances, forming what he calls "The River Lucinda", in fact his dream of returning to the woman he lost in his uncontrolled life. In this dream he thinks of his two daughters who would be expecting him too. And by the way he traces he finds people who still consider him and people who despise him, the fruit of what he did of his life until then. It is a very strong metaphor and produces a gigantic film. Burt Lancaster, I think, made the best part of his career here. I think this film could only have been performed with him in the lead role. Each one of us is incorporated into the story, living with Ned all his dramas, every moment of his "return home." The sequence in which he fights a race with a horse is the most perfect that is known, is exquisite. And he finds women who were part of his past not well understood, but that gives us the dimension of a superficial life and frivolities. Actress Janice Rule has here, too, one of her biggest moments in the movies. It's beautiful. The unexpected and perfect ending of the film completes this vigorous story of a man who has lost his way in life and can not find himself again. I watched The Swimmer in 1968 when it was released and I've been watching it regularly over the last 50 years. Each time I discover a detail, a situation that I did not perceive well, it is an incredible experience. Great, great, great movie!

I saw this movie in 1968 when it came out, and have never been able to forget it. I never found anyone who had ever heard of it--a shame. It's my favorite Burt Lancaster performance: I can't imagine anyone else doing the role justice.

When Neddy is ready to leave the garden cocktail party he has been invited to, he looks out across the valley and sees the row of pools, all belonging to his neighbors. He's obviously a poet, and sees the chain of pools as a river (Metaphor). He decides to swim back home. Little does he, or we, know at this point what going home means! He goes from house to house, he greets his friends and jumps into their pools. We become a little worried as things seem to get a little out of hand--a little more so at each house. It's not long before we realize that this "river" is (Meta-Metaphor!) a trip through time, through his life--and that he has made one fine mess of it. The ending is amazing, and almost unbearable.

The idea of the film is good but probably better in the book. A man gets the brilliant idea to swim home in a neighborhood where everyone has a pool. Along the way he meets people from his life and pieces of his past reveal what has happened to him. He isn't as well liked as he thinks.

The film has many good bit parts for people playing his neighbors, among them a sensitive Joan Rivers! The photography gives a good feeling of the place but the editing is not the best. Several minutes could easily be trimmed down. The story does not say enough about the man's character or his earlier actions. The film could have been more and I understand why it was not a hit and quite forgotten until recently. Could be remade!

A man beyond middle-age living in tony, upscale Connecticut environs decides to swim home from one neighbors' swimming pool to another, drinking cocktails all along the way, engaging in friendly, empty banter and confronting all the demons of his life -- most of his own making. This is a late '60s experiment (and, thankfully, they were more experimental in the main in the '60s than today) that takes an exceptional short story by the uniquely American master teller of modern tales, John Cheever, and expands it into a character piece for the wonderful Burt Lancaster. Here he's playing an ordinary business executive stuck in an early '60s, three martini lunch time warp, a Viet Nam era/Hippie-Nation prevailed-upon Upper West side would-be master of the universe. A man who is strangely out of place and out of time and will suffer a fate, maybe cruel, maybe just, but one that he is entirely complicit in despite any protest. This is engagingly dark stuff told under the glare of a late summer bright sunny sky. The film's flaws are bound to its era of production -- auto-camera zooms and sunlight flares and delirious music montages -- but they mean little compared to the hyper-sophisticated smarts of its dialogue and the performances, obviously from Lancaster, but also the unique variety of women he encounters from his past before arriving at his horrible present. "It's a beautiful day! Look at that sky, look at that blue water!"

"The Swimmer" is a film with a decent overall score and very positive reviews. Nonetheless, it's NOT a film for all tastes and it's certainly among the stranger films of 1968!

The story is without context. It simply begins with Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) arriving unannounced at a friend's home across town. They haven't seen each other in some time and you have no idea where Ned's been nor what's occurred. All you know is that he has a weird obsession....to go from home to home in the rich suburbs swimming across their pools until he eventually reaches his home. Why? You have no idea. And, through the course of the story, you learn a bit more about Ned...and how he's fallen from grace. But what did he go through?! What about his life? Amazingly enough, the viewers seem to know as much as Ned, as Ned is living only in the now and seems to have little recollection of the last 1-2 years of his life.

Well, this certainly was a daring role for Lancaster. Not only does it have a plot that is far from a crowd pleaser, but he has to briefly disrobe. He also acts the entire film with nothing on other than a bathing suit.

So is it any good? Well, the idea is interesting and the ending is pretty good....but it really seems like it would have worked better as a short film, as 95 minutes of all this seemed drawn out and overdone. A genuinely odd film.

EVERYONE has films that for some strange reason, seemingly completely out of sync with one's age and place and station in life at the time, resonate and then some, impacting that person for years to come.

For me, the two that stand out in that regard are 1968's "The Swimmer" and 1973's "Save the Tiger," both dark character studies dealing with morality, amorality and the twists and turns of complex lives not always so well lived by their middle-aged characters.

Why I identified with these characters at such an early age myself I have no idea, only that their serpentine screen dilemmas provided a kind of moral road map in the real world, at least for me, and did their jobs as cinematic storytellers in staying with me all these years, still.

"The Swimmer," taken from a short story by John Cheever, stars Burt Lancaster as Neddy, an upper-class Connecticut man whom we find lounging poolside with friends in an affluent suburb.

It occurs to him that he can "swim home" by visiting pools of friends and acquaintances, a route that he sees as a kind of "river."

As the man swims, we begin to understand more and more about his life, or think we do, and he evolves through conversations, confrontations and offhand comments, until he winds up ingloriously at a public pool and, finally, standing shivering in the pouring rain before the gates of his mansion in one of filmdom's most surprising endings.

Many fascinating characters people the film, played by many a recognizable face, including Joan Rivers (yes, that Joan Rivers), John Garfield Jr. (son of the great noir star), Janice Rule, Marge Champion (dancer-choreographer Gower Champion's better half), Kim Hunter and Janet Landgard.

The film was directed by Frank Perry (with some scenes overseen by Robert Redford's frequent collaborator, Sydney Pollack, who is uncredited), with a screenplay by Perry's wife, Eleanor.

"Save the Tiger" stars Jack Lemmon as Harry Stoner, a clothing manufacturer who is undergoing the loss of youthful idealism as he weighs whether or not to pay an arsonist to torch his factory so he can survive financially through the insurance settlement. His friend and business partner is played by an extraordinarily effective Jack Gilford, a rubber-faced actor with the saddest eyes you'll ever see best known to a generation as the Cracker Jack man.

Like Lancaster's Neddy in "The Swimmer," Lemmon's Stoner in "Tiger" is undergoing more than an evolution, but a breakdown, not only emotionally, but spiritually as well. Each story is a type of first-person morality play as seen through the eyes of these central characters.

Lemmon won the best actor Oscar for his performance (beating out, among others, Redford, for his turn in "The Sting"), and the film was voted best drama by the Writers Guild of America.

Both films seem to have evaporated into the mists of time, little remembered or considered by generations that came after.

But they've stayed with me, I like to think because they were both beautifully rendered and had something worthwhile to say, expressing it uniquely and well.

If you're in the mood for thought-provoking character studies that will stay with you long after viewing, and for all the right reasons, I recommend giving them a look.

In 'The Swimmer', Burt Lancaster's character appears as an oddball: a rich man who decides to walk across his home county, visiting his equally weathly friends and taking a swim in each of their pools. At first it seems that the movie is taking a dig at his acquanitances who, in spite of their wealth, are unable to take simple pleasures in their surroundings; but the wider point seems peculiar as very few people actually have the option to do what our protogonist is doing. Indeed, when he starts hitting, rather creepily, on his former baby-sitter (who he chances to meet on the way) it might appear that the screenwriters have a very strange idea of "the good life" they seem to be recommending. Only gradually does the real point become clear: the character's life (his work, his family, his other relationships) has imploded, and his trek is a fantasy he has constructed to avoid facing up to the truth. As commonly in films of this era, the soundtrack in unsubtle, and some of the dialogue feels formulaic. More importantly, the idea of "swimming home" is too artificial for us to wholly believe in before it is revealed as a sign of madness and denial. But the film works better than you might suppose as Lancaster's strong performance adds credibility and humanity to the story that it might lacked without it.