The Swimmer — The Swimmer(Blu Ray)

The Swimmer is a drama come slowly-putting-together-the-pieces-mystery, which finds a middle-aged executive spending a summer's day visiting various swimming pools in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood.The late 60’s film starts as a lightly sun-hazed quirky suburbian drama, before slowly but surely breaststroking its way into troubling realizations and crushing reality. It’s most certainly a distinctive and thoughtful film- which sadly didn’t find its audience at the time of release- but has since become respected for its charting of a man’s slow-but-sure unfold and being a strange/ glum satire of suburban existence. Here from Powerhouse is a new Blu-Ray release of the film- featuring a clean ‘n’ crisp 4k scan, commentary track, and a few other on-disc extras- with the set finished off with an eighty-page booklet.
 

The Swimmer appeared in the year 1968-it was mainly helmed by NYC native Frank Perry, though it has an uncredited co-directorial credit from Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Out Of Africa).  The screenplay was by Perry’s then partner Eleanor, based on a 1964 short story of the same name by John Cheever. In total Frank Perry had twenty-one credits to his name- taking in fourteen feature lengths, with the rest of his filmography being TV films, docs, and a few US Show episodes. His feature-length featured the likes of emotionally charged mental health drama David & Lisa (1962), black comedy/ send-up of the chauvinistic and obnoxious side of mankind Diary Of a Mad Housewife (1970)- also released on Powerhouse, and back-from-death comedy fantasy Hello Again (1987).
 
The film opens in a jarring manner- as we see a dark blue swim short-wearing man running through woodlands towards a swimming pool. The man is Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster)- who we find out knows the residents of the house, they give him a gin and tonic, and reminisce with him. Looking out over the green tree vista below he says he’s going to ‘swim his way home’ doing one length in each of the house’s pools on the way back to his large house some miles away. He’s seemingly a successful and liked man, who has two young daughters and a glamorous wife.

As the film unfolds and Ned carries out his watery odyssey - he meets his families now grown-up babysitter Janet (Julie Hooper), grand husband and wife nudists, and a few people who start to slowly bring him out of his seemingly self-delusional state. With the film slipping from bright & slightly whimsical drama, to something a lot more troubling- with the whole thing edged with a feeling of dreamy surrealism, which slow greys and darkens its tone.
 
Lancaster is truly wonderful as the full of self-belief Ned- with his carefully crafted and brilliantly nuanced performance.  The rest of the cast is well picked with the very clever script drip-feeding reality into the situation and Ned's mind. The film runs at the one hour and thirty-five-minute mark, which feels just right- and as you can probably guess the end has little of the film's initial bright-ness and quirky charm.  All making The Swimmer a highly distinctive little film- which grows from its whimsical/ quirky beginnings to its grim and grey resolve.
 

Moving onto this region B Blu Ray release and featured on the disc is the 2014 4K scan of the film- this is very good, really enhancing the strange half-real quality the picture possesses. On the new extra side, we have a very in-depth & truly fascinating commentary track from Justin Bozung, who is the biographer of director Frank Perry. He begins by outlining how the film took four years to make- and how its production was fraught with script rewrites, scene recutting, and other issues- in all it had a total of four directors working on the film, as well as five editors. He talks about the film's 1.7 million budget, and how it was initially filmed in eight weeks. We get discussion about the ancient Greek sub-text running through the film. 
How things changed between the first script draft and the final picture. He points out reshoots, some of which featured different actors & jump-cuts. He talks about the film's themes of lost youth.  How it was originally envisaged for it to be filmed in real-time- featuring seventeen pools, and not just the ten featured. He talks about how executive producer Sam Spiegel meddled in the film, and how he did the same in other production he was involved in. Later on, he talks about the short story by John Cheever the film is based on, and how popular it was after it first got published in The New Yorker. We get talk about how the lead characters' name came about, and the similarities between the characters and the story's author. We find out the film initial had been planned to have an improvised soundtrack by Miles Davis, and much more- truly a must-play track. 
Otherwise, on the new extras front, we have Against the Tide (10.51) which finds actor, comedian and filmmaker Richard Ayoade discussing the film- and is most worthy,  as he talks about the unsettling and dream-like colours used, Lancaster’s take on the part, comparable films, and influences. On the archive side of things, we have Marge Champion on ‘The Swimmer’ (17.55) which is from 2013, and is an on-stage interview with the actor after a showing on the film. ‘The Swimmer’ Read by John Cheever (25.37) from 2004 the author reading his short story. Title sequence outtakes, Isolated music & effects track, Original theatrical trailer, Illeana Douglas trailer commentary (2019, 6 mins), TV spots, Image galleries: storyboards, deleted scenes, promotional and publicity material. With the finished release featuring an eighty-page book featuring a new essay by Sophie Monks Kaufman, a profile of writer John Cheever, extracts from interviews with Frank Perry and Eleanor Perry on the making of the film, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits

 

The Swimmer is a very distinctive and unequal look at blinkered self-brief and male pride/ masculinity, fed through an upper-middle-class satire. Powerhouse does a great job with the extras/ packaging here- with the new stuff taking in the excellent commentary track, interesting musing on the film from Ayoade, and an impressive eighty-page book. To buy this, and check out the rest of Powerhouse's great catalogue drop into here.