The Swimmer

For me, The Swimmer doesn't work. I really wish I had read the John Cheever story before watching this movie, but it was leaving Criterion in 3 days and I was on a time crunch. But here's the thing: The Swimmer is a Frank Perry movie, and the Perrys make horror movies. All of their movies are horror movies, even though none of them is actually in the genre: they're just made like horror movies. Mommie Dearest is actually a superb example. There's no reason for the film to be made in the way it is, but instead the camera lingers in weird ways, focuses on strange things, watches Joan Crawford walk eerily up the stairs. 

In any case, the trouble with the Perrys' version of The Swimmer is that we know something is off from the very beginning of this movie, even though it would have worked much, much better if we didn't perceive something as being wrong until much later when the main character himself starts to realize something is wrong.

This is John Cheever's Willy Loman, but we shouldn't start seeing ghosts in scene one.

Lancaster is expertly cast here, though. He's the perfect actor for middle-class unraveling as he has proven in many other films.