Product Details

• Actors: Burt Lancaster, Janet Landgard, Janice Rule, Tony Bickley, Marge Champion
• Directors: Sydney Pollack, Frank Perry
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: August 6, 1996
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000I1OY
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,244 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #57 in

  Video > Drama > Love & Romance > Crumbling Marriages

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

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 neighborhood. But as Ned encounters a variety of neighbors, we see from their reactions that Ned's on an entirely different kind of journey--that he is 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 like 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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Swim Into the Twilight Zone..., February 1, 2002

By	R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It really is amazing how unknown this movie still is. If you are unfamiliar with it, you are in for a real experience. It is based on a classic short story by John Cheever, and it works like an extended, lost episode of the old "Twilight Zone" television series. A middle-aged suburban man (Burt Lancaster) decides to swim across his wealthy Connecticut county, through all the swimming pools of his neighbors back to his own home. As he makes his journey you gradually become aware that he is not all that he seems. Dark secrets keep getting revealed and it soon becomes apparent that we are witnessing a telescoping of the man's entire adult life into a few afternoon hours of an early autumn day. The film becomes a powerful allegory about disillusionment and tragedy, without being the least heavy-handed about it. Like Cheever's other great short story "The Enormous Radio", "The Swimmer" can be interpreted as a religious parable about the self-deception of fallen humanity. The comeuppance Lancaster receives is almost too intense to watch. This is a genuinely shattering movie that will stay with you.

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Odd and Unsettling, September 26, 2000

By	Kathy Fennessy - See all my reviews

Odd, unsettling film, based on a short story by John Cheever (from his Pulitzer Prize winning collection), about a middle aged man who swims from one end of suburban Westport, Connecticut to the other. Wearing only a snug pair of swim trunks, Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) swims in each of his neighbors' pools until he reaches his home which, as he tells almost everyone he encounters, has a tennis court rather than a pool. Along the way, the sky turns from blue to black (both literally and metaphorically), and he realizes his life isn't quite what he thought it was.

Despite the presence of Lancaster, who was still in terrific shape at the time (he was 55 in 1968), Frank Perry's film was far from successful. And it isn't hard to see why--this isn't a happy tale and there's barely even a glimmer of hope or redemption at the end. Nonetheless, it's powerful and original stuff and, although you might imagine otherwise, doesn't really have much in common with the suburban melodramas of the 1950s, like "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit," or the suburban black comedies of the 1990s, like "American Beauty."

Granted, "The Graduate," which was released only a year before, was just as cynical towards the Left Coast's version of swimming pool and cocktail culture, but that cynicism was leavened by humor and the point of view was, even more significantly, that of the young characters in the film rather than their parents. That isn't the case with "The Swimmer," which is more like a condensed version of "The Great Gatsby" or "Death of a Salesman." In other words, it's a fully realized character study and minor classic about the failure of the American Dream. Not to all tastes, but easily as relevant today as it was in 1968.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lancaster reveals despair found in modern suburbia, October 14, 1999

By	A Customer (Sacramento, California) - See all my reviews

This is a beautiful, underrated film, as relevant today as it was in 1968. Burt Lancaster's swimming journey though the emptiness that defines suburban life stings the viewer. Lancaster's performance as the man who cannot connect with anyone, is perfection. The vapid emptiness of his friends and neighbors stands in sharp constrast to his pain. A sensitive, beautiful and emotionally draining score by Marvin Hamlisch adds to the film's luster.