The Swimmer (film)

Infobox Film
name = The Swimmer


caption = Video cover
director = Frank Perry
Sydney Pollack
producer = Frank Perry
Roger Lewis
writer = Eleanor Perry
John Cheever (story)
starring = Burt Lancaster
Janet Landgard
Janice Rule
Marge Champion
Kim Hunter
music = Marvin Hamlisch
cinematography = David L. Quaid
editing = Sidney Katz
Carl Lerner
Pat Somerset
distributor = Columbia Pictures
released = flagicon|USA 15 May 1968
runtime = 95 min
country = USA
awards =
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0063663

"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). It was made in the US by Columbia Pictures and 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 features cameos by Janet Landgard, Kim Hunter, Cornelia Otis Skinner and Joan Rivers, among others. The musical score, with passages for both a small orchestra and a generic mid-1960s pop sound, was by Marvin Hamlisch.

Plot

On a sunny late summer day in Connecticut, Ned Merrill (Lancaster), an apparently successful, appealing and popular middle-aged businessman, emerges from the woods wearing only a pair of swimming trunks and decides to "swim" home across the county, dropping in on friends' swimming pools.

At first he receives a warm welcome as he bumps into old friends and acquaintances from the past. These are mostly upper middle-class, affluent people with homes in the outer, upstate suburbs. However, as the day wears on and he encounters those who have been closer to him more recently, the welcomes turn increasingly sour. Ned's proud boasts about his wife, daughters and home are met with strong mixed feelings, jeers, suspicion and anger, especially from women. As day turns to evening a shivering Ned at last staggers up a rocky hill, forces open a rusted gate and as a thunderstorm begins, finds an abandoned house with no family and breaks down on the front stoop.

External links

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* [http://www.culturecourt.com/F/Hollywood/TheSwimmer.htm Appreciation of "The Swimmer" by Lawrence Russell]