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Amazon.co.uk Review
Burt Lancaster gives one of his most daringly complex performances in The Swimmer, a fascinating adaptation of John Cheever's celebrated short story. At first it seems that middle-aged businessman Ned Merrill (Lancaster) is merely enjoying a spontaneous adventure, swimming from pool to pool among the well-tended estates of his affluent Connecticut neighbourhood. But as Ned encounters a variety of neighbours, we see from their reactions that he's on an entirely different kind of journey, balanced on the edge of some mysterious psychosis that we can't fully understand until the film's final, devastating image.
A compelling portrait of loss, refracted memories, and deep-rooted emotional denial, The Swimmer sprung from the same late-60s soil that yielded similarly ground-breaking literary films such as The Graduate and Goodbye, Columbus. It's an egotistical showcase for the physical prowess of its 55-year-old star, but Lancaster turns it into something deeper, more disturbing, and completely unforgettable. --Jeff Shannon
Product Description
United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Mono ), German ( Mono ), Italian ( Mono ), Spanish ( Mono ), Arabic ( Subtitles ), Czech ( Subtitles ), Danish ( Subtitles ), Dutch ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), German ( Subtitles ), Greek ( Subtitles ), Hebrew ( Subtitles ), Hindi ( Subtitles ), Hungarian ( Subtitles ), Icelandic ( Subtitles ), Italian ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Polish ( Subtitles ), Spanish ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), Turkish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Anamorphic Widescreen, Interactive Menu, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: John Cheever's 'misery in suburbia' short stories, brief and to the point, have always proven excellent TV fodder. Director Frank Perry's The Swimmer, adapted for the screen by Perry's wife Eleanor, is a rare, and for the most part successful, attempt at offering a Cheever story in feature-length form. Dressed only in swimming trunks throughout the film, Burt Lancaster plays a wealthy, middle-aged advertising man, embarked on a long and revelatory journey through suburban Connecticut. Lancaster slowly makes his way to his split-level home by travelling from house to house, and from swimming pool to swimming pool. At each stop, Lancaster comes face to face with an incident in his past. Informing Kim Hunter that he once harbored a secret love for her, Lancaster is mildly upset by Hunter's indifference. Elderly Cornelia Otis Skinner is incensed at Lancaster's intrusion in her backyard and orders him to leave. At the next home, Lancaster tries to seduce the nubile Janet Landgard, who'd once baby-sat for his daughters, but she regards him as a silly old man. And so it goes: as each subsequent suburbanite peels off his self-protective veneer, Lancaster grows more and more disillusioned with what he thought was his ideal lifestyle. The more intensely pain...The Swimmer
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbreaking,
By
This review is from: The Swimmer [DVD] [2003] (DVD)
On a sunny autumn afternoon in a wealthy New England suburb, Burt Lancaster appears at a friend's garden wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks. Jumping into their pool, he announces that he has decided to swim home in a journey that will include his friends' and neighbours' swimming pools. Burt Lancaster was in his mid-fifties when this film was made, but has the body of a man half his age and at first the character he plays seems the model of success. However, as the film progresses it becomes clear that all is not what it seems and the film's climax is both shocking and heartbreaking. This is one of the finest and most underrated American films of the 1960's. Burt Lancaster gives a mesmerising performance and it is nice to see Kim Hunter as well. From the beautiful opening, with its haunting score by Marvin Hamlisch, to the powerful climax, this is a wonderful film that deserves greater recognition.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
How anyone can lose the plot ...,
By
This review is from: The Swimmer [DVD] [2003] (DVD)
This is a psychological 'day in the life' drama of a man not on the edge of a nervous breakdown - but, instead, in the denial stage after a nervous breakdown. You can't help but feel sorry for 'the swimmer' as deep down in all of us is a need to be socially accepted by our peer group despite the blows which life may inflict upon us.
I first saw this in my childhood and the closing scene stuck in my mind for a very long time. Great perfomance by Burt Lancaster.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"We Had Nice New Pink Lungs In Those Days",
By
This review is from: The Swimmer [DVD] [2003] (DVD)
I was 9 or 10 when I first saw this movie. Not the best age to watch a film about a middle age man's breakdown perhaps, but Boy am I glad I did. Alongside Ray's "In A Lonely Place", I had been immediately cursed with a passion for film that my young brain could not fathom. It was purely intuitive. The curse eventually led me to become a screenwriter. But back then, in the 1980's when Eddie Murphy and Police Academy films were most popular, my 9 year old eyes could not believe what I was watching. I simply could not take my eyes off the screen. The Swimmer is sinister in a subtle kind of way. It starts in the woods with the sound of branches being broken by naked feet. An owl hoots and a deer flits away. Someone's running fast, but from what or whom? Then before we know it we're by the pool with a host of characters drinking hangover cocktails discussing how beautiful the weather is. The Swimmer is one of the most haunting American movies ever made. Some might say "Sweet Smell Of Success" is Burt's finest hour, but for my money, Neddy Merrill is his greatest performance. He lends sadness, madness, despair, joy and optimism with melancholic pessimism. I don't think DeNiro or even Pacino have the range that Lancaster displays here. It's outstanding. The whole film has the sense of a man's life slipping away. It's poetic in the way that Burt seems to be unaware that he's no longer in the prime of his life. He defiantly swims on against the tide of time, desperately trying to cling onto the happier times. There's one scene where Burt's pool to pool odyssey threatens to be undone. An empty swimming pool with no water to swim through brings him to an almost full stop. But somehow, Burt does every stroke without. He does it because he wants to ignite the imagination of a sad young child. When he walks away, he worries that the child might be too imaginative and jump off the diving board. It reminds me of a Salinger short story I once read called Teddy. And perhaps as I get older I find more reason to love this film. It's a cinematic equivilent of all those great American novels I've enjoyed by Salinger, Fitzegerald and Faulkner and of course Cheever whose story the film is based on. This is a film to return to time and time again. You'll never be so casual about your front crawl again.
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