When you talk about "The Swimmer" you will talk about yourself?

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Janet Landgard, Janice Rule, Joan Rivers, Tony Bickley, Marge Champion, Kim Hunter, Charles Drake, Bernie Hamilton

DML Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ - great

"Do you really think its that easy? Of course, everything's always been easy for you. Hasn't it? You could always get a cab in the rain, a woman into bed. God knows I was easy enough to get." - Shirley Abbott

Why watch this? This is one of Lancaster's most underrated performances.

Plot Summary: Ned Merrill, in his dark blue swim trunks, emerges from the woods and visits the pool of people he knows. He has an odd idea: to swim all the pools in one day that are in a line to his own home. He is fit and confident, if not a bit quixotic. As the day progresses, things get darker and darker. One pool at at time, we learn the kind of man Ned really is, and it's a painful revelation.

Dad's Preview:  This film is satirical on several fronts: the Connecticut snobbery of the wealthy suburbs, how Ned treated the women in his life, his inability to cope with his aging. This purposefully ambiguous puzzle is being constructed piece by piece, all the way to a shocking ending. This is an under-appreciated Lancaster classic.      

Horizon Pictures; Columbia Pictures