The Swimmer

(Frank Perry, 1968) Film4, 5pm

An intensely strange vehicle for Burt Lancaster, based on a John Cheever story and brought to the screen by writer-director team Eleanor and Frank Perry. Lancaster, in swimming trunks throughout, plays all-round good guy Ned Merrill, who drops in on old friends one Connecticut summer, then decides to swim across the county, pool by pool. Gradually we realise that he’s not the well-loved guest we thought. Lancaster’s star persona lends itself to ruthless dismantling in this study of American middle-class masculinity, something like a waterlogged Death of a Salesman. Touches of late 60s fuzzy lyricism are offset by the sheer darkness of it all, with an ending that’s one of the most desolate in Hollywood history.