The Swimmer (1968)

Based on the short story of the same name by John Cheever The Swimmer was something of a vanity project for its star Burt Lancaster. The studio that produced it, Columbia, wasn't overly enthusiastic about the projects box office potential and naturally wanted to keep costs to a minimum. In fact Columbia didn't want to shoot a certain scene that Lancaster felt was essential to the film, the confrontation between Lancaster's character Ned Merrill and his former mistress Shirley Abbott (Janice Rule), so after official filming had stopped Burt used his own money to put it back into production and shoot that scene, bringing in his friend Sydney Pollack to direct it uncredited, (Frank Perry is the films official director and does a fine job).

The films story is an unusual one to say the least, a surreal drama which I'll let Wikipedia tell you about:

"On a sunny day in an affluent suburb in Connecticut, a fit, tanned and tone middle-aged Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) drops by the pool party held by some old friends. They offer the bathing-suit-clad Ned a cocktail, as they nurse their own hangovers from the night before. The old friends share "school boy stories." The nostalgia seemingly getting to Ned, he gets the sudden idea -- he realizes that there is a series of swimming pools that almost forms a "river" all the way to his house, making it possible for him to "swim" his way home across the county.
Ned dives into the pool, emerges at the other end and starts his journey. This perplexes his friends, all middle-aged smokers and drinkers who seem to use their pools only as status symbols and mere ornamentation.
As Ned travels pool to pool, every stop compels an encounter with a different set of neighbors, each having had a particular acquaintanceship with him. In one backyard Ned meets 20-year-old Julie (Janet Landgard), who as a pre-teen had babysat for his daughters. Ned reveals his idea to Julie, who decides to join him on the adventure. Ned and Julie have several experiences including crashing another fancy pool party and sipping champagne. Stopping for a chat in the forest, Julie reveals that she once had a school girl crush on him. When Ned mistakingly takes this as an opportunity to return the affection, Julie freaks out and flees.
However optimistic and adventurous Ned is, he continues to be confronted with reminders of his not-so-glorious past. It is a neighborhood of judgmental and well-heeled “Joneses” intent on one-uping one another with their displays of conspicuous wealth, their insistence on social etiquette, and their constant gossiping about those who don’t keep up such facades."

And it goes on. It's a great, unusual character piece for Lancaster who starts out appearing to be one kind of man, and over the course his journey we discover him to be quite another, and in in absolute denial about this. The film features lots of good performances as the various neighbors, some of them quite quirky, and the films score, the first by future EGOT winner Marvin Hamlisch is a very beautiful one. In short it's a kind of proto-indie film, and a well done one. ***