Aquatic masterpieces: The five best movie swimming pool scenes
The greatest thing about water, aside from drinking the translucent syrup, is covering yourself in the stuff during a particularly hot day in summer. Indeed, nothing is better than piercing the skin of a body of water with your foot, checking that it’s an adequate temperature before hurling your whole body underwater, rising and announcing, “It’s actually not that cold once you’re in.”
The celebrated swimming pool is certainly nothing new either, with the very first of its kind dating back to the 3rd millennium BCE. Such man-made pools were loved by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, with the Italian lord Gaius Maecenas often being wrongly named as the inventor of the heated luxury delight. Maecenas, indeed, was one of the first to have a heated pool made for his villa, but this doesn’t mean he invented the things.
So, thank you to the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilisations for popularising the humble swimming pool, for without your influence, cinema would have never produced such incredible sequences. Throughout the decades of cinema, the mysterious allure and comedic potential of the swimming pool have led to the creation of countless memorable moments.
Although there are, indeed, too many aquatic moments to mention, these five encapsulate just how beautiful, inventive and terrifying they have the potential to be.
The five best movie swimming pools:
Aquatic L.A. – Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
For many, the 1997 Paul Thomas Anderson movie Boogie Nights is the celebrated director’s magnum opus. Set in the hills of L.A. during the late 1970s, the movie follows the lives of a group of budding porn actors and filmmakers, with Anderson casting the likes of Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman to act out his cinematic vision.
What results is a vibrant exploration of Hollywood during the closing stages of the 20th century, with Anderson transporting audiences back in time with an absorbing and authentic tale. No moment better realises this immersion than the party scene where the camera interacts with the environment as if it, too, was a guest, going from conversation to conversation before diving into the water.
Blood in the Water – Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Too often forgotten in conversations regarding the greatest modern horror movies, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In was the talk of the industry back in 2008. Released the very same year as the first instalment in Hollywood’s own vampire franchise Twilight, Let the Right One In was an entirely different beast, being a dark horror tale set in the dark streets of Sweden about a strange new girl who arrives at the local school and befriends a bullied boy.
In what is certainly the most memorable moment from the classic horror, the boy Oskar finds himself the victim of his tormentors once again, being dunked underwater for a prolonged amount of time. The sadistic bullies meet their demise; however, once vampire Eli gets their hands on them offscreen, Alfredson keeps the camera on Oskar underwater, and the bodies of the schoolboys are ragdolled across the water.
Empty bowls – Dogtown and Z-Boys (Stacy Peralta, 2001)
Traditionally, swimming pools are filled with water, but it’s easy to forget that the playful structures can be enjoyed with or without liquid. Sure, if you fancy a swim, you’d rather be accompanied by H20, but if you want to skateboard, “the water had to go, and they had to be ridden man,” as surfer Allen Sarlo proclaims in Stacy Peralta’s seminal 2001 documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys.
Quite possibly the greatest movie ever made about skateboarding, Dogtown and Z-Boys documents the lives of the Zephyr skating team that rose to prominence in the 1970s thanks to their revolutionary take on the sport. Many of the team members were ambitious, opportunistic young men who cared little for the law, leading for many of their summer days to be spent driving around the streets of Santa Monica and Venice, California, looking for desolate swimming pools they could empty and ride.
Pool party – The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968)
It would be a crime not to include the Frank Perry classic The Swimmer on the list of the best cinematic pools. After all, the film includes several ones throughout its runtime. A cautionary tale of a truly peculiar nature, Perry’s film tells the story of Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster), a man who vows to swim home across the valley by taking a dip in a number of swimming pools that cross his route.
A tragedy that exists in some sort of ethereal dreamworld, the film explores the dangers of living in the past and within the mindset of your youth rather than developing with age. Such takes Merrill to an empty swimming pool, where he tells a young boy, “If you make believe hard enough that something is true, then it is true for you,” as well as a grand pool party where his delusional reality comes crumbling down. The latter, taking place at the climax of the film, is a tragic sequence and a piece of movie magic.
The fountain of youth – Cocoon (Ron Howard, 1985)
Alien movies are among some of the most beloved types of cinema out there, yet the 1985 Ron Howard film Cocoon somehow still remains an oddity in spite of its baffling premise. Penned by screenwriter David Saperstein, the film tells the story of a group of older characters who come across a swimming pool full of alien cocoons. Surprisingly, they consider this strange discovery as the perfect time to take a dip, realising that when they do, their youth is restored.
The real-life Fountain of Youth tale was divisive at the time of its release, with the dodgy CGI hardly helping its case, but time has been kind to Howard’s cosmic tale. Now, the peculiar, flame-like alien spirits feel more like stylish flourishes rather than face-value extraterrestrials, with many of the swimming pool sequences feeling strangely euphoric, uplifting and heart-warming.
