Le plongeon

I still have dreams where I'm at summer camp; 10 years old and running through the woods. The sun barely breaks through the thick forest canopy. There is no way for me to recapture that feeling in my adult life. No backpacking trip in a national park or well-planned vacation to an unspoiled beach can provide it. This is the problem of privilege: What seems to be a gift is really a loan. We spend the rest of our lives paying back this debt. This movie is fantastic. Burt Lancaster is the man. If you are a film fan and an American and you have not yet seen this film, then be careful! Save this one for a rainy day because you won't find many more like it. It's about living in the past, in a dream of what the present should be. It's about a privileged, womanizing, self-obsessed middle aged man who comes up with a plan to swim home that is clear only to him. "Why would you want to do that?", people keep asking him. Watch this movie alone and then don't talk to anyone about it. Keep it secret. Let it fuel you.

The Swimmer is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. The story is simple but unusual. A successful executive - Ned Merrill - (in the end we realize that this is not quite so), in a psychological trance, imagine being in a time before the real and decides to "go home", the metaphor that supports the film. His return happens in a planned way, passing by the pools of his friends and acquaintances, forming what he calls "The River Lucinda", in fact his dream of returning to the woman he lost in his uncontrolled life. In this dream he thinks of his two daughters who would be expecting him too. And by the way he traces he finds people who still consider him and people who despise him, the fruit of what he did of his life until then. It is a very strong metaphor and produces a gigantic film. Burt Lancaster, I think, made the best part of his career here. I think this film could only have been performed with him in the lead role. Each one of us is incorporated into the story, living with Ned all his dramas, every moment of his "return home." The sequence in which he fights a race with a horse is the most perfect that is known, is exquisite. And he finds women who were part of his past not well understood, but that gives us the dimension of a superficial life and frivolities. Actress Janice Rule has here, too, one of her biggest moments in the movies. It's beautiful. The unexpected and perfect ending of the film completes this vigorous story of a man who has lost his way in life and can not find himself again. I watched The Swimmer in 1968 when it was released and I've been watching it regularly over the last 50 years. Each time I discover a detail, a situation that I did not perceive well, it is an incredible experience. Great, great, great movie!

A man beyond middle-age living in tony, upscale Connecticut environs decides to swim home from one neighbors' swimming pool to another, drinking cocktails all along the way, engaging in friendly, empty banter and confronting all the demons of his life -- most of his own making. This is a late '60s experiment (and, thankfully, they were more experimental in the main in the '60s than today) that takes an exceptional short story by the uniquely American master teller of modern tales, John Cheever, and expands it into a character piece for the wonderful Burt Lancaster. Here he's playing an ordinary business executive stuck in an early '60s, three martini lunch time warp, a Viet Nam era/Hippie-Nation prevailed-upon Upper West side would-be master of the universe. A man who is strangely out of place and out of time and will suffer a fate, maybe cruel, maybe just, but one that he is entirely complicit in despite any protest. This is engagingly dark stuff told under the glare of a late summer bright sunny sky. The film's flaws are bound to its era of production -- auto-camera zooms and sunlight flares and delirious music montages -- but they mean little compared to the hyper-sophisticated smarts of its dialogue and the performances, obviously from Lancaster, but also the unique variety of women he encounters from his past before arriving at his horrible present. "It's a beautiful day! Look at that sky, look at that blue water!"

John Cheever's short story of 1964 is his most anthologised and here Eleanor Perry, wife of director Frank, has achieved the feat of expanding its twelve pages into a film of ninety five minutes. Cheever's prose is meticulous of course but the tale itself is relatively uneventful and the participants insubstantial so that plenty of fleshing out of episodes and characters has been required, even to the point of adding a few!

Two of the additions are Julie played by newcomer Janet Lindgard who admits to having had a teenage crush on the Ned Merrill of Burt Lancaster but then repulses his advances. The other is the boy Kevin of Michael Kearney with whom Ned 'swims' the length of an empty pool. It is during this scene that Ned utters the crucial words that provide a key to his character:"if you make believe hard enough that something is true, then it is true for you."

We never discover the nature of Ned's 'misfortune' and what has caused his fall from grace although it is hinted at by various characters throughout his aquatic odyssey across the quasi-subterranean string of swimming pools that lead to his home. In believing that his previously affluent life has not changed is he suffering from the ultimate self-deception or has he had a mental breakdown? It is both fitting and ironic that the grim reality of his situation is brought home to him not in the private pools of his social set but by some distinctly unpleasant people in the public swimming baths.

The most telling encounter is that of Ned and a former lover Shirley Abbott played by Janice Rule. What is the briefest of exchanges in the original story has been developed here into one of the bitterest scenes between male and female on film. Ned approaches her with great optimism but his hopes are soon dashed when she lashes out at him for his selfishness and thoughtlessness which leads to his self-pitying lament "we are all going to die."

Could this be the true meaning of Cheever's story I wonder and is this simply an allegory for the ageing process? At the opening of the story Ned is described by Cheever as resembling 'the last hours of a summer's day.' As his journey progresses his stamina is sapped, he feels chilly and his bones begin to ache. I trust it is not too fanciful to see in this the inevitable decline from glorious summer, through the sere and yellow leaf of autumn to the winter of discontent. Just a theory of course.

What is certain however is that this is one of Mr. Lancaster's finest performances and interesting to learn that prior to making this, not only was he unable to swim, he suffered from aquaphobia!

I saw this movie in 1968 when it came out, and have never been able to forget it. I never found anyone who had ever heard of it--a shame. It's my favorite Burt Lancaster performance: I can't imagine anyone else doing the role justice.

When Neddy is ready to leave the garden cocktail party he has been invited to, he looks out across the valley and sees the row of pools, all belonging to his neighbors. He's obviously a poet, and sees the chain of pools as a river (Metaphor). He decides to swim back home. Little does he, or we, know at this point what going home means! He goes from house to house, he greets his friends and jumps into their pools. We become a little worried as things seem to get a little out of hand--a little more so at each house. It's not long before we realize that this "river" is (Meta-Metaphor!) a trip through time, through his life--and that he has made one fine mess of it. The ending is amazing, and almost unbearable.