movie world

It's hard to imagine a more unlikely prospect for a film adaptation than John Cheever's short story, The Swimmer, which was first published in The New Yorker. The story of Ned Merrill, a middle-aged man in suburban Connecticut who appears to be suffering a major nervous breakdown, was not the type of story that was usually optioned by a Hollywood studio but it definitely appealed to director Frank Perry, an independent filmmaker who had previously received a Best Director Oscar nomination for the sensitive character study, David and Lisa (1962). With his wife Eleanor serving as the screenwriter and Burt Lancaster agreeing to play the title role, Perry was able to convince Columbia Pictures to finance The Swimmer (1968) despite their reservations about the unusual storyline: the Lancaster character finds himself several miles from home and decides to swim his way back, using the backyard pools of numerous acquaintances along the way. With each new encounter, we get another piece of the puzzle, another detail about the identity of the confused protagonist and what might have brought him to his current mental state.

Directors: Frank Perry, Sydney Pollack
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Janet Landgard, Janice Rule
Country: USA

BD50 + DVD9 | 1080p AVC, NTSC | 01:35:09 | 44.4 Gb + 7.70 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Francais, Espanol
Genre: Drama

Extras:
• Isolated Music Score
• "The Story of The Swimmer" brand new five part, documentary by Oscar-winner Chris Innis featuring in-depth interviews with stars Janet Landgard, Joan Rivers and Marge Champion, composer Marvin Hamlisch, film editor Sidney Katz, assistant directors Michael Hertzberg and Ted Zachary, UCLA Olympic swim coach Bob Horn, and Joanna Lancaster:
-- Part 1: Backstroke (24:36)
-- Part 2: East River Crawl (25:39)
-- Part 3: Beneath the Surface (29:49)
-- Part 4: The Deep (30:00)
-- Part 5: Shallow End (28:37)
• Allison Anders Interviews Marge Champion (17:54)
• John Cheever reads "The Swimmer" (25:39)
• Still Galleries
• Trailers and TV spots
• Filmographies
• Easter egg: Highlight "Return to Menu" on the "Trailers and TV Spots" and arrow left to invisible icon of a swimmer to reveal a trailer (2:01) for Chris Sollars an eighteen-minute parody shown at the artist's solo exhibition in 2013.