The problem is that the river, dubbed "The Lucinda" after his wife by the central character, Neddy Merrill (Burt Lancaster), is a seriously broken and disrupted waterway that becomes increasingly unnavigable and more treacherous as the story proceeds. At first, Neddy 's relationship with his affluent Fairfield County neighborhood seems cordial enough but then it gradually deteriorates as the viewer observes that Neddy's standing in his community is not at all as it first appears. Even at the film's tragic end, we still aren't quite sure what it was that brought Neddy to financial, emotional, and spiritual ruin. The one positive aspect is that he is still physically as fit as a fiddle, having appeared for ninety minutes in nothing other than a skimpy, speedo-like swimsuit and, at one point, emerging in nothing at all when he visits a couple of nudist friends. If he wasn't going to reveal it all, why bother removing his suit in the first place? I know. It was too much for 1968, but Lancaster probably would have done it if he had the opportunity. Why the heck not at that point in his stunningly successful career? He was already on the top of the Hollywood world and deservedly so.With this viewing, I began thinking, as other reviewers suggest, that Neddy's unique adventure was nothing more than a horrible nightmare about failure itself. The only problem is that he didn't awaken at the end as Amy Irving gratefully did in the horror classic "Carrie". In this case, I am regrettably convinced that Neddy's adventure through the suburban swimming pools of Fairfield County was real and that his increasingly hostile encounters with his neighbors were not only in his imagination. That is what makes the film even more tragic--that Neddy is never freed from the humiliation and horror of his ordeal, as I so much want him to be. Unfortunately, it isn't until the end of the journey when he discovers the unbearable truth at long last."If you make believe hard enough that something is true, it's true for you," he advises the young boy with the empty swimming pool. These words reveal more than any others the disastrous state of denial and the state of mental breakdown that Neddy has reached. The complex and troubling predicament of the central character was very effectively augmented by the musical score of Marvin Hamlisch, his very first film composition. Burt Lancaster was so dedicated to this production that he paid $10,000 out of his own pocket, a sizeable sum in 1966, to finish the film. He considered this to be among the best films of his long, diverse career, and I think that I agree with him.No matter what the causes of Neddy Merrill's downfall actually might have been, he is only a human being, regardless of how flawed, as we all are, and we have nothing but compassion for him.

("Loses" a star for being, in some ways, a little dated, in terms purely of production).It's a lucid dream/nightmare, it's a metaphor, it's a reckoning, it's an enigma.It's all these things. It's also a nice reminder that the willingness to craft a nut perhaps too tough to crack wasn't beyond a Hollywood system famously too eager to put butts in the seats.In some ways, this is a dangerous film--it teeters on the edge of being an apologetic for the unforgivable.But... it also plies a plausible deniability... as its images ultimately seem thrown over the wall from the subconscious. Or... is it the Jungian collective unconscious? If the latter, then... it's your baby. Deal with it.You owe it to yourself to let it screen in your conscious mind. For your delectation (at least).Check it out.

This powerful film, had a huge effect on me, when i first saw it.I actually thought it was about swimming.Lancaster was made to play this part, and boy is he good in this fine work.A story of someone in a world of his own, who has blocked out reality, is superbly done, and with a great script. A film which hits the viewer like a ton of bricks at its end,and makes it compelling viewing. Avoid reading spoilers, as it will wreck your enjoyment of this excellent film.

Looking as if he had just finished his rendezvous with Deborah Kerr on the beach in "From Here To Eternity," Burt Lancaster costumed in only swim trunks that conform to his fit body plays Neddy Merrill in "The Swimmer." It is based on John Cheever's short story of the same name. The movie is set in the 1960s in a well-to-do northeast American white suburb populated with successful middle-aged business executives complete with fashionable and well-coiffed housewives and matching children and nice houses with manicured lawns and sparkly swimming pools. The cinematography expertly conveys the time and place. The movie begins with Lancaster immersing himself in a neighboring family's pool sitting atop a verdant hill. The wife and husband greet him cheerily and talk about the hard-drinking party they held last night and apparently every weekend. Lo and behold a buddy from Neddy's school days pops by, but he's in no mood to join Neddy for another swim in the neighbors' pool and neither are the neighbors. They prefer Neddy stay beside the pool and knock down a few drinks with the sound of ice tinkling in their lowballs and laughter and flirting filling the air.Neddy is a fish out of water. He politely shakes his head and looks out over the crest and sees that about every house on the way to his home has a pool. He announces that the string of cement ponds form the River Lucinda, in honor of his wife, and declares he will swim in every pool until he arrives home. The neighbors and his school buddy chuckle among themselves. But Neddy is serious and leaves smilingly, intent on swimming every section of River Lucinda.This is not an inspirational movie about a man trying to complete a self-imposed challenge and doing a victory lap at the end. It is about a suburban man in a country-club atmosphere who comes to realize with every stroke he takes in his neighbors' pools his life is not what he thinks it is, and death may just be around the corner. It is more than middle age crazy. This is a film about a man's thoughts and previous actions played out in the back yards of Neddy's peers who are not stuck in the past but are complacently comfortable in the present. There are happy, liberating, and gentle moments during and between Neddy's swims to be sure. He meets a young woman who was a childhood friend of his daughters and a small boy selling lemonade in need of a friend. But slowly the people in Neddy's enclave are not so kind to him and detest his taking dips in their pools or crashing their garden parties. Water can be cathartic, but not in Neddy's case. Mud and other impurities accompany him on his trip down memory lane, slowly awakening him from his amnesia as he visits a spurned lover and learns of debts way past due."The Swimmer" will be enjoyed by those moviegoers who like discovering the interior thoughts and experiencing the exterior reactions of an aging suburban stud put out in the rain with nowhere to go.