The Swimmer (1968)

(On Cable TV, January 2021) For a superstar actor with great looks and a commanding presence, Burt Lancaster spent a good chunk of his career undermining his own screen persona and kicking around the idea of what a man’s man could be. The Swimmer is a surprisingly twisted film, but it does take a while to realize how much so. It starts with a scene that almost feels normal—a pool party, with a guy (Lancaster) making an unusual promise to his guests to “swim his way home,” going from one pool to another as he walks back to his house in his upscale neighbourhood. The stage is thus set for an episodic film in which every pool becomes a scene, our protagonist meeting acquaintances and strangers along the way. If the impressionistic cinematography between those pool scenes doesn’t clue you that something else is happening, then the various elliptical references to the protagonist’s past accumulate until there’s a definite mystery at the end of the road—what will be at the house once all the pool-hopping is done? It’s not a coincidence if characters keep commenting that the sunshine is going to be replaced by clouds and rain. As the film goes on, we piece enough things together to realize that the protagonist is cheerfully lying to himself and others, and by the time the final sequence hits, well, it’s not as if we’re surprised. (Still, the film could have done with an extra coda or two to explain things, such as how did he end up in the opening scene in the first place?) Directed with some nascent New Hollywood style by Frank Perry then Sydney Pollack, The Swimmer strikes me as the kind of film that could not have been made in Hollywood just a few years earlier—psychologically twisted, surprisingly dark and not entirely realistic despite being grounded in solid landscapes. Keep your eyes open for a first screen role for comedienne Joan Rivers.