Off the Deep End: Pools and Delusions in The Swimmer

by Kevin Renick

“Nothing's turned out the way I thought it would. When I was a kid, I used to believe in things. People seemed happier when I was a kid, People used to love each other. Shirley, what happened?"

"You got tossed out of your golden playpen, that's what happened."

 — Ned Merrill and Shirley Abbott in The Swimmer, 1968

The swimming pool has been a prominent feature of the American landscape since the rapid growth of suburbs in post-WWII culture. Upper and middle-class homeowners, enjoying a period of prosperity, would contract out for a geometrically pleasing shape in a corner of their back yard which they would fill with crystal clear water on summer afternoons. Their kids were entertained, and neighbors came over for patio parties, with a drink cart nearby and a deep blue sky giving its blessing over the whole affair. The suburban pool became a symbol of modern leisure, luxury and the potential for all sorts of couplings, young and old alike. Pool scenes proliferated in the movies, especially in the teen genre. There’s just something mesmerizing about that placid blue water juxtaposed with a vivid green yard while jovial humans forget their cares for a while. It’s summer: let’s head for the pool, everyone!

Although no one on my street had anything but a plastic pool, I distinctly remember the well-kept pool at Chautauqua, a resort where my family spent several evocative summers when I was a kid. Despite the crowds, there was always room for my raft. My memory lingers on images of sparkling water, women on reclining lawn chairs, and children splashing and playing. I adored that place, and at least one of the pools featured in The Swimmer brings back those hot Chautauqua afternoons, and that cooling, inviting water… before the travails of adulthood had begun. 

The Swimmer is based on a short story by John Cheever; it’s an episodic tale about Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster), who absolutely loves all the gleaming pools in his affluent Connecticut suburb. He hatches the idea to swim home, pool by pool, until he reaches the house he shares with wife Lucinda and their two daughters. He makes a mental list: Howard and Betty Graham (Kim Hunter) have a pool. So do the Biswangers, the Gilmartins, Shirley Abbott (Janice Rule), and many others. Ned will have  to traverse the woods and fields between these pools and do plenty of walking (“portaging,” he calls it), but by God it’s possible.

“I could really do it!” Ned declares to the Grahams, the first couple he visits. It’s a symbolic mission for Ned and nothing can dissuade him, especially not the incredulous looks and comments from his neighbors. Clad only in his swim trunks for the entire movie, the manly, charismatic Mr. Merrill makes small talk with neighbors, shares a quick drink, and then takes OFF to the next pool. Thus begins one of the most unusual movies of its era, a searing portrait of self-delusion that has become a cult classic, a Roger Ebert “thumbs-up” entry, and, honestly, one of the few films that has brought tears to my eyes. It’s a deep-end dive into the nature of memory, nostalgia and mental illness. And there are beautiful images and arresting faces throughout, none more so than the uncomprehending face of Lancaster, the blue-eyed star who is driven by something we can’t understand at first and who seems like a pretty likable, charming guy. The Swimmer makes us take this enigmatic journey WITH Ned Merrill and holds back considerable information, even at its shattering climax.

Ned encounters different groups of people at each pool who have very different reactions to him. He proves to be a perplexing anti-hero embarking on a "heart of darkness" scenario through upper class suburbia, not in search of a renegade military officer as in Apocalypse Now, but simply his own comfortable home and family. Mr. Merrill is going “upriver” to a place that will test his sanity and offer a biting commentary about suburban complacency and disconnection in a manner that defies Hollywood standards of the late 60s.  

Initially, I was surprised to be so emotionally affected by this film. The characters inhabiting it are mostly wealthy folks with big homes, vast lawns best served by riding mowers, and of course, the best pools money can buy. Conversations range from self-congratulatory descriptions of the filtration systems in their pools, to the parties of other neighbors, to how much they had to drink last night (it’s generally quite a bit). This was not the milieu in which I grew up. But the accumulating story and evocative scenes provoked something deep inside me. 

We first see Ned Merrill emerging from a beautiful woodland – birds, tall green trees, a deer – all startled by this human figure passing through. The forest gives way to some rocky landscaping and then our first glimpse of a perfect suburban pool, which Ned happily dives into.

"Where have you been keeping yourself?" a neighbor asks as he emerges from the water.

"Oh, here and there, here and there," he responds.

The neighbors in these early scenes are friendly and welcoming to Ned. They say things like "It's been a dog's age!" or "Why don't you leave a phone number lying around?" Gradually you start to notice the disconnect between Ned's vague answers and the pointed questions people ask him. Something is not right. Ned stares off into the distance or talks in rapturous terms about the beauty of the sky, the color of the water in the pool, or declares “what a day” it is. Everything is just wonderful in this odd marathon of pool hopping which confounds the people he encounters.

"Why would you want to DO that?" one of the neighbors asks.

Ned turns down invitations to dinner or to stay for a longer visit. Nope. He's going to swim home, and that's all there is to it. Once he dives into a pool,  it means “goodbye”. Then more “portaging,” to reach the next destination.

A whirl of deeper emotions and dreamier scenes commence when Ned arrives at the home of "friends" of his two daughters. There he meets the sweet and lovely Julie Hooper (Janet Landgard, in her film debut), whom he recognizes as his girls' babysitter.

"Why don't you come ‘round anymore?" he asks her.

"Well, I guess you didn't NEED me anymore!" she responds, looking puzzled.

"Oh we always need a good babysitter," he tells her.

Julie’s flummoxed, but the scene moves on. Ned has clearly shown that he’s in his own little world. When he tells Julie and several others about his swimming adventure, laughter results…but not from Julie. She smiles and defends him, saying "It sounds like a great adventure!" She accepts his invitation to come with him, to "explore the headwaters of the Lucinda River."

They appear at another pool party together, a memorable scene that includes a brief appearance by veteran actor Diana Muldaur. Then there’s a long, impressionistic sequence that really got to me. The middle-aged man and the younger woman take a leisurely walk through the woods on a gorgeous summer afternoon. It’s partially shot from a distance or through the richly green trees, with only the sound of their voices in the lush landscape. The score, one of the first efforts by Marvin Hamlisch, is dreamy and slightly melodramatic. It hints at exaggerated memory and hazy hopes for some ill-conceived fantasy. Julie tells Ned that she had a big crush on him. She says that she used to go into his closet while babysitting. She’d touch his suits and even, she admits, made off with one of his shirts. Ned listens as though hypnotized, losing his grasp of the limitations of the situation. Julie is sharing intimate secrets, and Ned wants it all out there.

"There's so little love in the world," he tells her. "When it's kept secret, it's wasted."

The first time I saw this movie, that line killed me. I felt just like Ned Merrill in that moment! I had plenty of crushes on girls that I kept hidden. And some I didn’t keep hidden but should have. This would continue, in fact, until I was Ned Merrill's age. People hiding what they felt was a recurring aspect of my life. I hid a lot, too, unable to be honest when I could have. And it tormented me that certain people never told me how they perceived me until it was too late to connect or do anything about it!

Janet Landgard does a terrific job with Julie, the deceptively innocent character she plays, and you can understand how Ned might fall under her spell. The camera definitely adores her. But Julie has good self-protection instincts and soon recognizes that Mr. Merrill is stepping over several lines.

“I’ll take care of you," he says, after hearing her describe being harassed at a job in New York City. And Julie goes running...out of the woods and out of Ned's life. A pattern has been established: Ned tries to bond with women who are NOT available to him. He can't understand why his seemingly sincere attempts to connect and express his affection, are not welcome.

Another of my favorite scenes comes next: A seven or eight-year-old boy, Kevin Gilmartin (Michael Kearney), is playing a pennywhistle, a short distance from his parents’ huge empty pool.  There is no water in it at all.

"Well that really DOES it," Ned declares dejectedly, as he comes upon the Gilmartin property.

Kevin explains that the pool is empty because he can't swim. "I'm afraid of the water," he says.

Not like I was needing more parallels to my own life by this point in the film, but...my name is Kevin and I can't swim, either. In fact, I have a partially repressed memory of a traumatic incident that occurred during a swimming lesson when I was about the age of this boy.

Ned tells Kevin that they could PRETEND to swim the length of this pool, and do all the strokes correctly. They'll do it side by side, like in a real pool. Kevin loves the idea and is elated when they finish. "I've done it!" he shouts. "But I suppose it doesn't count, cause there's no water."

"For us there WAS," says Ned."

"But that's a lie, isn't it?"

"No. You see, if you make believe hard enough that something is true, then it IS true for you."

Indeed. Just the way I was able to convince my childhood friends we were traveling through time, imitating scenes from The Time Tunnel, or fending off sharks by climbing across the bars on a swing set, or saving ourselves from the dangerous criminals we made up in our fictional drama The Wonderful Life. Make-believe is so MUCH of what can make childhood magical. Ned Merrill is trying hard to play make-believe with a life that has gone wrong, for reasons we don't yet understand. And it's this introspective young boy who unknowingly tries to challenge him.

Every yard in The Swimmer looks beautiful and expansive. Ned’s walks between pools and picturesque grounds are strongly evocative. I remember working in neighbors' yards as a kid or occasionally getting invited to family friends' pools with my mom, in settings that WERE like those of this movie. And yes, I've been at poolside parties in later years with a drink in my hand, cracking bad jokes and telling stories with friends. But more times than I care to admit, I would catch myself staring into the distance or up at the sky like Ned does in the film. If you stare hard enough, will you finally spot the truth of your life? Can you go looking for it? And when does self-denial become something you'll admit to and try to resolve? That is one of the key questions this movie asks. 

Watching The Swimmer again — after more than a decade and countless bouts of introspection and self-doubt — I was reminded that sometimes I don’t feel much further along in my life. I still hide secrets, I wonder how I got to this place as an adult, and I can’t comprehend how some people respond to me. Did I do something wrong? Am I denying some hurtful thing I did to so-and-so? This is paramount to how the movie affects me, and from reactions I’ve seen on the internet as I researched this movie, I am not alone. 

In the last third of the film, Ned’s encounters are increasingly painful and disturbing. At one crowded gathering, Ned spots a hot dog man pushing a painted cart around. He recognizes the cart as one that he made for his daughters when they were young. He tries to take the cart back and is curtly informed the new owners bought it at a "white elephant sale."

He’s pushed to the ground, told by the hosts, "You crashed in here, now you can crash the hell out!"

The cheerful banter from early in the film is over; Ned's final few encounters will be brutal. He visits a former lover, Shirley Abbott, played with authentic intensity by Janice Rule. While making them both a drink, he exclaims, "We're running out of Tabasco sauce."

"WE?" she challenges. "Aren't you a little confused this afternoon?" Yes, Ned surely IS. Ms. Abbott lays out, without revealing much background, the details of the affair they had and how Ned disappointed her. "You met your match with me, you suburban stud!" she yells.

For overall humiliation, the next scene is worse. Ned the tanned, proud swimmer has been reduced to a limping, worn-out wreck. He has to cross a crowded public pool, is forced to take a shower first, and barely gets through a noisy throng of families and young kids. He looks like a scared, wet rodent, trying to get out of a maze alive, and he's fighting for air. I know the feeling. It’s like trying to accomplish something you think is noble and creative, but the difficulties start to multiply. And you begin to feel you’re falling apart…that you WON’T make it through the homestretch despite your best efforts. Panic starts to set in, and Lancaster’s face here shows that.

At the last neighborhood pool, Ned must contend with some former business colleagues he has wronged, including Howie Hunsacker (Bill Fiore) and his condescending wife Lillian (Jan Miner). They not only belittle HIM, they make disparaging remarks about his wife and daughters. Ned finally starts to snap; he races up a rocky incline and across the final distance to his own home. And of course, it's abandoned. The tennis court is overgrown with weeds, the house is locked, and it's pouring down rain. Ned is a sobbing, defeated mess as the illusion he’s been trying to maintain is shattered. He is truly, truly alone. He can't deny the reality of his life anymore.

What should we conclude? Well, we all take journeys in our lives. We get into relationships, move to another city, take a new job, and make decisions that have unwanted consequences. We’re often slow to admit we've done something wrong. The theme I relate to most in The Swimmer is the unwillingness to face our own failures. Especially when people who used to care about us decide to write us off.

I once dated a woman named Stephanie. It was a fun relationship, and there was definitely a mutual attraction. To this day, I don't know what went wrong. It's nowhere in my conscious memory. I DO recall phoning Stephanie a few years after we broke up; I wanted to say hello and see if we might still share any kind of connection. She wanted to know how I got the number, and discouraged me rather bluntly from calling again. This was a Swimmer-like moment for me. I "swam a few strokes" to reach this former love, a woman with whom I had shared one of the best slow dances of my life, and I was left crushed, trying to figure out WHAT I could have said or done to alienate her so much.

Years later, something similar happened with a visionary artist and musical collaborator who really believed in my talent. Some kind of financial misunderstanding took place between us, and my failure to do something he expected caused him to cut me off and refuse any further projects. Was it just over money? Or was there more? I’ll probably never know.

It's not my intention to recite a litany of failures and losses, only to express how painful it can be to confront certain old memories, and how a relatively obscure movie can bring them back to me with such strength and urgency.

When it's summer, the skies are bright blue, people are laughing, and the cicadas are rattling in the trees like unseen maracas, it can be agonizing to feel alone, unconnected to those you desire and those you have lost. One such summer, I encountered a former high school classmate, Barbie. We met by chance, and she started inviting me over for beers and conversation. She was sweet and attentive, but painfully shy, and she struggled with mental health issues. She confessed to having a crush on me in high school, something I never knew. Whenever we met, I tried to be a nice guy and to make her laugh if possible. We drifted apart again. Her health deteriorated, and a decade later I got word of her death. She felt alone most of her life, I heard, and I wondered if I could have changed that, even a little. Should I have tried harder?

Questions without answers. That’s what The Swimmer stirs up each time I watch it. What are the consequences of disappointing or alienating people on your journey, including some you really loved? I can’t stop thinking about it. Ned Merrill seems incapable of approaching the subject until the end of the film, when it’s just too late. Everyone’s gone, and he has nothing but the cracked mirror of his psyche to stare into.

Some people NEVER face their failings. And some lose themselves to substance abuse or other modes of self-destruction because they can’t face what’s happened in their lives. The Swimmer is very much about how we can create an “alternate narrative” of our life, a storyline more suited to our self-mythologizing. Ned tells himself and his neighbors that things are “great” with Lucinda, his daughters are at home playing tennis, he loves his home, and he loves that big summer sky, reflected in the pools he keeps swimming across.

Composer Hamlisch remarked that his score was meant at time to simulate ripples of pool water. It includes a melancholy four-note motif used in variations throughout the film. And you hear it as the camera goes in for a soft-focus closeup of Julie's enchanting eyes, emphasizing the idea that romantic feelings can be idealized, not based in truth, not even appropriate. In reality, Ned Merrill has NO claim to any romantic relationship with his former babysitter. But in his mind, she’s been holding back her emotions, and she needs to open up and share all her secrets with him. He can’t see how misguided he is. The entire sequence between Lancaster and Landgard has a vivid, dream-like quality to it, and lodged itself in my memory the first time I saw it.

Ned is unable to comprehend the wrongs he’s done, and why he’s shunned. It’s awful to be rejected. It’s awful to be told you’re a loser or worse. Ned’s “river of pools” empties into a dark, sludgy place by the movie’s conclusion. And still, much remains unexplained The drenching rain and the abandoned house Ned once called home convey a sense of his tragic reality, but not the full picture. Ned started out wanting to “swim the headwaters of the Lucinda River,” under deep blue skies. Instead, he drowns in delusion and struggles for his last breath. 

Life gives us the opportunity to swim, to practice our strokes and travel from point A to point B and beyond. But some of us are forever afraid of the water and will hardly venture into the “pool of truth” at all. Others will take lessons, and learn to navigate the real world in a healthier, more confident way as the years pass. We can get clues about our progress from the people we encounter along the way, from each “pool party” we visit. The Swimmer, at its evocative best, is a reminder that self-denial will RARELY lead to a rapturous, uplifting summer afternoon, even if our self-made fantasy life is far preferable to the reality we find ourselves stuck with…