The Swimmer (1968) sees Burt Lancaster trapse about the screen in bathing trunks for ninety minutes. Viewers get more of a 52-year-old male physique than they need, complete with body hair and thigh dimples. To balance that off, they get an interesting drama.
The Swimmer
The Swimmer originated as a short story by John Cheever. It is about a man named Neddy (Lancaster) who galivants around the estates of well-off people in the Connecticut countryside (think Hepburn territory).
The movie is a unique take on the “quest” story. Lancaster gets it in his head to “swim” home. He does this by taking a dip in a series of pools on the eight-mile journey to his house. He treats the walks between pools as “portages.” Along the way, Lancaster meets a series of people, and the person he is gradually becomes clear.
The Swimmer is written and directed by the husband-wife team of Frank and Eleanor Perry. The Perry duo received an Academy Award nomination for David and Lisa (1962). Frank’s half-sister is also the mother of Katy Perry, believe it or not.
The original short story came in at only twelve pages. The Perrys expanded it and added additional characters. The film they came up with delivers what it needs to deliver. The Perrys manage to keep it mostly interesting, considering the movie repeats the same basic event over and over as Lancaster goes from pool to pool.
Perry’s style is a good example of the proverbial “transparent curtain.” He gives the movie a fairy tale atmosphere without being showy about it. It makes one realize that certain dialects of cinema voice have been lost over the years. It should be noted, however, that Sydney Pollack came onto the film for reshoots. Perry was let go after principal photography due to creative differences with producer Sam Spiegel.
The Swimmer Team
Lancaster’s performance is what you would expect from a classic movie star. Even though he doesn’t have much to do, his sincerity beams from the screen. The role comes off as simple. By the end, the viewer realizes that Lancaster kept them guessing as to what kind of man he was exactly throughout the film.
The Swimmer is mostly a one-man show. A great many characters pass by onscreen but few of them stay for long. A couple of recognizable faces appear in the bunch, however.
It is odd to see Joan Rivers’s original face. She plays a partygoer at one of Lancaster’s stops. In what would surely be a treat for DrunkenYoda, Diana Muldaur also appears briefly. She went on to play Dr. Katherine Pulaski in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Beyond those two, most faces will flash by and disappear. A viewer of older movies will likely recognize some of them, but they are mostly lost to time today. Nevertheless, one more mention goes out to Kim Hunter. She played Stella Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She was also the chimpanzee Zira in the Planet of the Apes films.
The Swimmer Among Sharks
Ultimately, The Swimmer is a movie that tries to mean something. In this case, it could be interpreted in a couple of different ways. We won’t go into any of that in case viewers want to check the film out for themselves. Suffice it to say, this aspect of the film is what keeps a person watching to the end as they attempt to sort it all out.
Rating The Swimmer is a bit easier than a genre movie. This is because a genre movie is expected to hit certain benchmarks within the conventions of its formula. Since The Swimmer is more of an artistic film, it has more freedom in how it delivers its story.
In this regard, the movie works. It is not a case of first act, second act and third act. It is more a matter of figuring out what each stop represents in the journey. One might say The Swimmer has a separate act at each pool. The Perrys then wisely hit the ending within ninety minutes before the narrative construction grows stale.
The Swimmer Takes A Dive
Lancaster said The Swimmer was his best and favorite movie of his career. Despite this, it was not an easy shoot. He said…
“The whole film was a disaster, Columbia was down on it. I personally paid $10,000 out of my own pocket for the last day of shooting. I was furious with Sam Spiegel because he was over at Cannes playing gin with Anatole Litvak whilst he was doing The Night of the Generals (1967). Sam had promised me, personally promised me to be there every single weekend to go over the film, because we had certain basic problems — the casting and so forth. He never showed up one time. I could have killed him, I was so angry with him. And finally Columbia pulled the plug on us. But we needed another day of shooting — so I paid for it.”
The Swimmer ended up being a box office failure, but it has survived to his day. It is now considered something of a cult classic. Dive into it and see if you agree…
