On Burt Lancaster

Even as the biggest man on the screen, he could simultaneously somehow seem the most vulnerable, no matter how much menace he managed to make show. As a convict in Birdman of Alcatraz, he was also a subdued soul with a passion for ornithology; as a huckster opportunist in Elmer Gantry, he was also a soul dying to be saved; as a cuckolding man of war in From Here to Eternity, he was also Private Prewitt’s primary pal; and as a ruthless Winchellian king of the gossips in Sweet Smell of Success, he looked like an honestly treacherous man tormented by tiny mice, next to Tony Curtis’s shameless PR flack.

Then there’s his role as Ned Merrill in The Swimmer, and it’s of a different magnitude altogether. Adapted sublimely and faithfully from the Cheever story that it transcends, this faux-idyllic fever-dream of suburbia psychosis, of a man so tormented by his loss of everything—friends, family, job, mistress, and house, even his damned dog—is about the impossibility of accepting the reality of newfound destitution. Pool by pool through a residential paradise, Merrill visits with old acquaintances and is shunned by nearly all of them, and directly insulted by more than a few. His proud and smiling figure, statuesque and swimming-trunked, belies the essential indignity that defines his existence. His ex-mistress reminds him of his callous cruelties; his ex-business associates remind him of his underhanded dealings; his friends, meanwhile—the best they can muster is an appalled embarrassment. It’s one of the most chilling movies ever made about the mind’s own power for deluding itself--about how much sheer power can be found in the man crazy enough to believe in nothing more than his own sanity. And Burt Lancaster is the one who looms larger than language above it.