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The Swimmer is a 1968 film directed by Frank Perry and starring Burt Lancaster. A surreal, allegorical tale, it is based on the short story of the same name by John Cheever, adapted by Eleanor Perry (wife of director Frank).

Plot

On a sunny early autumn day the camera runs along an autumnal forest in an affluent suburb in Connecticut. The running is that of Ned Merrill (Lancaster), a seemingly successful, appealing and popular middle-aged advertising executive, clad only in swimming trunks. We never learn where he has arrived from. He walks out of the woods and into the backyard of some old friends sitting by their swimming pool. After chatting with them he says he intends to "swim" home across the county by dropping in on friends' swimming pools which form a consecutive chain leading back to his house. At first Ned gets warm welcomes as he meets old friends. These are mostly upper middle-class, well-to-do people with homes in the outer, upstate suburbs. However, there are hints that Ned has been away for up to two years and he brushes off any questions about himself. Each stop brings him face to face with some aspect of his life. The first one is with his youth when anything was possible and the last one with the current collapse of his family life and where everything seems lost.

As the day wears on and Ned sees those who have been closer to him more recently, the welcomes begin to sour. Ned's proud boasts about his wife, daughters and home are met with strong mixed feelings, jeers, suspicion and even anger, especially from women. In one backyard, Ned meets a girl in her late teens who, years ago, had babysat his daughters. She leaves with him, at first thrilled to do so owing to an unspoken crush she had for him whilst in her early teens. But when Ned rather clumsily tries to woo and kiss her, she flees. He carries on with his "swim," dropping by the pools of sundry other friends as it slowly unfolds that his life has somehow gone quite wrong. He crashes a party at one pool and while he is put up with at first, Ned is thrown out when he has an outburst after spotting a hot dog wagon he had once bought for his daughters, but which had recently been sold in a "white elephant" sale. He then shows up at the backyard pool of a stage actress, Shirley Abbott, he'd had an affair with several years or so earlier. She is still feeling bitter and hurt. When he tries to rekindle things, this poolside meeting ends very badly for both of them.

As the day ends, Ned winds up in a crowded public swimming pool where he runs across and is shamed by local shopkeepers to whom he still owes money for unpaid grocery and restaurant tabs. When some of them comment about his wife's overall snobbish attitude and his out of control daughters' recent troubles with the law, he doesn't want to hear it and angrily flees. As the sun goes down, a shivering Ned at last staggers up a rocky hill, shoves open a rusted gate and walks through an overgrown garden with an unkept tennis court. A thunderstorm begins as Ned knocks on the front door of a locked, dark and thoroughly empty house, whereupon he breaks down and weeps on the front stoop.

Production

The Swimmer was made in the US by Columbia Pictures, filmed largely on location in Westport, Connecticut during the summer of 1966, but not released until 1968. Sydney Pollack was brought in to finish the film after Perry left because of "creative differences".

The film was Janet Landgard's first featured cinematic role and there are cameos by Kim Hunter, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Joan Rivers, among others. The musical score by Marvin Hamlisch has dramatic passages for a small orchestra along with a highly generic mid-1960s pop sound.

Soundtrack

All the pieces were composed by the young Marvin Hamlisch; the soundtrack album was released only in 2006 thanks to Film Score Monthly.

1. "Theme From The Swimmer ("Send For Me In Summer") / Big Splash" 3:23
2. "Easy Four / Bubbles" 3:28
3. "The Dive / Don't Come Back / Slow Walk / The Horse" 4:06
4. "Lucinda River / Two People" 4:13
5. "Together / Hurdles" 3:42
6. "Julie, Julie / The Little Flute / The Goodbye"1:26
7. "Carnival" 2:30
8. "Lovely Hair" 2:34
9. "Down the Steps / You Loved It / On the Road" 3:07
10. "My Kids Love Me / Traveling Home / Closer to Home / Home / Marcia Funebre" 6:07
11. "Theme from The Swimmer (Reprise) ("Send For Me In Summer")"

External links

• The Swimmer at IMDb
• Appreciation of The Swimmer by Lawrence Russell

• 1968 films
• American films
• Horizon Pictures films
• Columbia Pictures films
• 1960s drama films
• Films based on short fiction
• English-language films
• Films directed by Frank Perry
• Films set in Connecticut