186. US directors Frank Perry’s and Sydney Pollack’s “The Swimmer” (1968): Social satire on the typical WASP US male, an abstract morality tale, rewinding in time, presented with intelligence, rarely encountered in Hollywood cinema
S hort stories have made interesting feature films. In the UK, short-story writer Alan Sillitoe adapted his short story The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner into a film screenplay to make a film classic—Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner (1962). A few years later, in USA, John Cheever’ s short story published in 1964 (in the New Yorker magazine) was made into a 1968 Hollywood film directed by Frank Perry and Sydney Pollack called The Swimmer (1968). But unlike the British film, in the case of the Hollywood film, it was not the author Cheever who wrote the screenplay but director Frank Perry’s wife Eleanor Perry, a feminist, who did. Cheever merely played a cameo role in the film, probably to lend his tacit approval to the project. And happily for us Ms Eleanor Perry, substantively improves the Cheever story. In fact this screenplay ought to be studied and appreciated by potential screenplay writers. Having read the short story, one appr...