Der Schwimmer (1968)

Der Schwimmer: Directed by Frank Perry, Sydney Pollack. With Burt Lancaster, Janet Landgard, Janice Rule, Tony Bickley. A man spends a summer day swimming as many pools as he can all over a quiet suburban town.

“A man beyond middle-age living in tony, upscale Connecticut environs decides to swim home from one neighborsu0026#39; swimming pool to another, drinking cocktails all along the way, engaging in friendly, empty banter and confronting all the demons of his life — most of his own making. This is a late u0026#39;60s experiment (and, thankfully, they were more experimental in the main in the u0026#39;60s than today) that takes an exceptional short story by the uniquely American master teller of modern tales, John Cheever, and expands it into a character piece for the wonderful Burt Lancaster. Here heu0026#39;s playing an ordinary business executive stuck in an early u0026#39;60s, three martini lunch time warp, a Viet Nam era/Hippie-Nation prevailed-upon Upper West side would-be master of the universe. A man who is strangely out of place and out of time and will suffer a fate, maybe cruel, maybe just, but one that he is entirely complicit in despite any protest. This is engagingly dark stuff told under the glare of a late summer bright sunny sky. The filmu0026#39;s flaws are bound to its era of production — auto-camera zooms and sunlight flares and delirious music montages — but they mean little compared to the hyper-sophisticated smarts of its dialogue and the performances, obviously from Lancaster, but also the unique variety of women he encounters from his past before arriving at his horrible present. u0026quot;Itu0026#39;s a beautiful day! Look at that sky, look at that blue water!u0026quot;”