THE SWIMMER (1968) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Frank Perry
Burt Lancaster, Janice Rule, Janet Landgard,
Kim Hunter, Marge Champion, Bill Fiore
An unusual study in disintegration, starring Burt Lancaster as an affluent suburbanite who decides to swim home by cutting across all the swimming pools in the county. It's a story that demands understatement, which it doesn't get, either from Frank Perry's direction or Marvin Hamlisch's musical score. What it does get is a devastating performance by Lancaster in a role that's as physical as it is psychological. His wardrobe for the entire film is a pair of swimming trunks, and he's not even always wearing those. Lancaster was in his mid-50s then, but he was still an athlete, in amazing shape, and more than most other movie stars, he knew how to act with his body. He does that here. By the time he reaches the end of his epic swim, you realize that what you've been watching is really an internalized horror movie. Based on a story by John Cheever, who appears briefly in a party scene. The Michael Douglas thriller "Falling Down" is a partial remake of this.
