Cinema Spotlight: The Swimmer (1968)

The Swimmer, (1968) Directed by Frank Perry, WARNING: SPOILERS

The Swimmer stars Burt Lancaster as a man who decides one bright sunny summer day that he must swim across all his neighbors pools on his way home. It’s a beautiful technicolor day in Westport as tan and well-built Ned Merrill graces the screen. We’re introduced to him from a high birds-eye shot as he scampers up through the hillside brush to his neighbors pool clad in nothing but some skimpy swim trunks. He’s met with big smiles and laughs as an old friend that hasn’t come around to say hello in a while. They ask about his family; his wife, the kids.. He says his wife is at home, the girls are playing tennis. Ned smiles a large, gleaming smile and looks to the heavens and remarks: “Isn’t it just the most beautiful day.” (paraphrased). After declaring his mission for the day, his company looked at him as if he’s crazy. He tears off down the hill into the woods and they brush him off as eccentric.

At this point, The Swimmer starts feeling like a dreamy odyssey which is accentuated by the film’s color palette and textured editing. In covering Ned, the camera becomes very interested in the sensory environment and the lens in often blurred by the trees or the sunlight.

Ned gets through about ten pools throughout his journey and each pool allows us to learn a bit more about where he’s going and perhaps more interestingly, where he’s come from. Neighbors are always itching to get a grab of the tan, tall handsome man and steal his attention for a bit. Ned affectionately pats the wives and talks a bit of business with the men or listens to them brag about their power tools, pristine new pools and recently-installed plastic greenhouses. Everyone’s quite elated to see him, but when he reveals his mission; following Lucinda’s river, everyone looks a bit puzzled. Ned always leaves them wanting more, taking half a sip of their cocktail and galloping off towards the next beautiful estate, and the next episodic encounter.

Throughout, Ned’s environment starts to get the best of him. He brings a young woman along who used to babysit for him; he tries to kiss her and she runs away. He brings the newspaper to a nudist couple and they apologize for not lending him money; he scowls and trudges away to take a dip in their lap pool. He takes lemonade from a little boy and teaches him to swim through the air using just his hands in an empty pool that his parents never filled. He finally makes it to the public pool, adorned with screaming children and sunscreen-clad parents, and he’s confronted by some old neighbors. At each junction we see how easily Ned takes from others to fuel his personal idealism; he borrows money, love, adoration and lemonade with no intention of settling up.

He finally makes it to the home of one of his former lovers and is met with surprise and disgust. Ned tries again and again to ignite intimacy yet is kept met with No’s. As Ned keeps trying and failing to make a human connection with his former flame, our pity for him grows larger by the second. He’s not as larger-than-life than he was just an hour earlier. He’s tired, crippled, bruised and battered and he looks it.

The final scene shows Ned enter the large, ivy-clad rusty gates to his grounds as the rain starts to fall. Water pelts the ground and thunder roars as he limps past the tennis courts; clearly not used in weeks. He gets to the front door but it’s locked. He sinks to the floor. The camera pans in and we see nothing; all packed up and gone. Ned cries on his doorstep.

The trivia section on IMDb claimed that Lancaster called this “…a parable for the failure of the American Dream.” Toward the end of the 1960s, questions were arising about the natural sustainability of this suburban lifestyle that had taken America by storm a decade earlier. Everyone putting up fronts of paradise; white picket fences and “keeping up the with Jones’s” and all that. It was all a bit fake and phony; a performative act put on for social graces. This phenomenon is displayed in this film.

Ned is an American dreamer. He finds himself “Noble and Splendid,” and is impressively able to deny in challenge to these qualities. By the end, we understand that he is able to repress so much of his pain by using others; moving on to the next stimulation. Not dwelling on anyone’s pool deck for longer than a sip or two of a dry martini.

Note: This film should be seen in color on the largest screen possible.