The Swimmer

Ned Merrill appears one summer day at a neighbour's pool. In swimming trunks, tanned, cheerful. He has an idea: he will treat all the pools in the valley as a river and swim his way home. He crosses from garden to garden. At each stop the people he meets treat him differently, and the conversations grow steadily more uncomfortable. The subject is not swimming but what the man knows about his own life being wrong. Ned talks about his wife, his daughters and his job; the neighbours' reactions show that none of it holds any more. The film releases information in pieces and does not complete the picture until the last pool. The form starts realist and grows abstract. The light changes, the air cools, the season advances; the journey appears to take a day and the film leaves that deliberately uncertain. The source is John Cheever's short story. The adaptation added scenes to stretch a brief text to feature length, and the production was troubled. After Frank Perry finished shooting, certain sequences were reshot by another director who is not credited. Burt Lancaster plays Ned, in what is counted among the most unusual roles of his career. Who it is for: viewers who like allegorical narratives and sixties American cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting explanation; the film states nothing directly.