The Swimmer (1968)

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Swimmer aired on TCM last week. I recorded it and finally got around to watching it. I caught the last half of this movie on late night TV when I was a teenager and never forgot this strange movie. Ned (Neddie) Merrill, played by Burt Lancaster, is the swimmer, a suburban resident of an affluent town in an unnamed Westchester-like county. Ned realizes that his well-to-do neighbors' homes are in such proximity to each other that their swimming pools form a path to his own home that he can navigate, like a symbolic river. And that's exactly what this movie is all about. Lancaster travels to his home by swimming all the pools in the river (and also walking to and from each pool). Hijinx ensues along the way. From a John Cheever short story (this pretty much confirms my Westchester hunch), which I read yesterday (free text available online). If I read the story before I ever saw the movie, I woulda guessed that the story was unfilmable.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

I read that Cheever story. I never knew it was adapted to a movie, or that it would even be adaptable.

[Edgy MD]

Fascinating.

[batmagadanleadoff]

yIegoQAayFs

[Vic Sage]

my dad was a swimmer; he was a lifeguard in Hawaii while in the service during WWII and, growing up, we lived 3 blocks from the beach. He'd go lay on the sand and swim from Coney to the tip of Sea Gate every weekend. so it was a big part of his life. And for some reason he loved this movie, depressing as it was.

[Edgy MD]

So, when you talk about The Swimmer, you do talk about yourself. Or at least, your dad.