Hear Me Out: ‘The Swimmer’ is Burt Lancaster’s most underrated performance
Burt Lancaster rose to fame through his squeaky clean all-American image and star-making smile, becoming known as one of the leading men of his generation through roles in films like Criss-Cross, The Leopard and 1900, occupying a similar place in history to Paul Newman and Robert Redford for reflecting the masculine values of the era. However, in a world that is constantly evolving, the ideals of the present can soon become values of the past, with many actors becoming known for portraying specific archetypes and struggling to break free from this mould.
For Lancaster, he expanded his reputation through a series of darker roles that challenged the constraints of masculine ideals, something that was particularly prevalent in his 1968 film, The Swimmer.
Directed by Frank Perry, The Swimmer follows Ned Merrill, an all-American man who is a vision of success. He has the dream wife, house, kids and job, and everyone around him seemingly admires the impressive life he has curated for himself. But the story starts on one bright summer’s day as Ned decides to swim home through all the swimming pools in his quiet neighbourhood, each forming a glittering snake across the county.
The film begins as Ned emerges from the shrubbery and launches himself into the first pool, with the owners revealing themselves to be his friends as he suddenly declares that he will achieve the impossible and swim all the way home. Through this initial conversation, we learn that he prides himself on these external values and his presentation of himself as an accomplished man, desperate to assert his masculinity by completing a physically impossible quest.
However, at this point in the story, Ned uses this mission to conceal his own flaws and vulnerabilities, desperate for a win that will temporarily elevate his ego and restore his crumbling sense of masculinity. Perry structures the film as a fable, with Ned’s journey through each pool and interaction with each neighbour revealing a new truth about his life and so-called success.
The pillars of masculinity have typically been defined by obtaining professional, physical and personal success, and as Ned’s quest continues, each of these pillars is slowly shattered as he is confronted by the failures that litter each part of his life. He uses these external values to hide his shortcomings, but each one is hollow and insubstantial, eventually crumbling to reveal a broken man who has nothing left but the achievement of his absurdist and meaningless quest.
The screenplay for The Swimmer opens with a quote from French playwright, Eugene Ionesco that reads, “The war has begun. Our country is being invaded. They have taken the first swimming pool.” In post-World War 2 France, Ionesco and many other playwrights were pioneers of what is now known as ‘absurdist theatre’, with plays that focus on existentialist ideas and poke fun at the unanswerable questions and pointless nature of life, all of which makes life and the labours of living, absurd.
Masculinity has typically been defined by the idea of ‘becoming’ instead of ‘being’, and The Swimmer uses the absurdism of his quest to comment on the pillars of masculinity and the constant quest to prove yourself as a man. Ned is a man faced with obsoletion at the turn of the decade, with everything he values crumbling as the world readjusts to a new order. However, he doesn’t have a place in this new order, because his status was built on lies. In the past, men have been told to achieve manhood by any means possible and using the traditional pillars of masculinity to obtain this, they have been encouraged to sacrifice their integrity for greatness and glory, and this is what Ned did to climb to the top. He cheated and lied to gain success, but at the end, his lies catch up to him.
The absurdist nature of Ned’s character and his all-consuming quest is beautifully portrayed by Lancaster, capturing someone who swings from the extreme end of pride to total emasculation, at first covering up his flaws through sheer ego until the facade is completely destroyed. Towards the beginning of the film, he is the living embodiment of the perfect man, being showered in compliments by friends who admire his slim physique and perfect smile, all qualities that Lancaster himself was praised for.
But the film uses this image against the audience by subverting it throughout his journey. Each aspect of his identity that he has taken pride in becomes a symbol of deceit and failure, and the actor embodies this sense of manic defensiveness and denial as he clings onto the shreds of his reputation while it is continually obliterated by his neighbours.
But as the story nears the end, he becomes resigned and hollow, forced to face up to his failures and left with nothing to cover them up, with his facade fading into nothing as it is revealed that his entire life was a lie. The final scene shows Ned, naked and injured, stumbling up the front steps of his old house and crying out for his family, who are nowhere to be seen. The perfect wife, kids and house don’t exist, with the house being as empty as he is, with boarded-up windows and empty rooms that contain no sign of life.
The Swimmer is a devastating look at the ideals we cling to in order to add meaning to our life, with Lancaster adding a new layer of nuance to the story through his real-life reputation as a man who had it all, using this to hammer in the emptiness of these values and the true consequences of a life spent in pursuit of them.
