A man spends a summer day swimming as many pools as he can all over a quiet suburban town.A man spends a summer day swimming as many pools as he can all over a quiet suburban town.A man spends a summer day swimming as many pools as he can all over a quiet suburban town.
- Awards
- 1 win
- Ticket Seller
- (as John Garfield Jr.)
- Directors
- Frank Perry
- Sydney Pollack(uncredited)
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaBurt Lancaster always insisted that this was both his best and his favorite film of his career.
- GoofsIn the second shot of Ned pounding on the door of the empty house, the film is being run backwards - it's the same shot as before the interior of the house is seen through the broken window.
- Quotes
Kevin Gilmartin Jr.: They took the water out of the pool because I'm not a good swimmer. I'm bad at sports and, at school, nobody wants me on their team.
Ned Merrill: Well, it's a lot better that way, you take it from me. At first you think it's the end of the world because you're not on the team. Till you realize...
Kevin Gilmartin Jr.: Realize what?
Ned Merrill: You realize that you're free. You're your own man. You don't have to worry about getting to be captain and all that status stuff.
Kevin Gilmartin Jr.: They'd never elect me captain in a million years.
Ned Merrill: You're the captain of your soul. That's what counts. Know what I mean?
- ConnectionsFeatured in TCM Guest Programmer: Gilbert Gottfried (2013)
We are to assume that in the written version, some of Ned Merrill's earliest visits to his friend's pools have been adjusted in his memory to appear more benign. In the movie, Frank Perry chooses to present the reality, but he has nevertheless turned in a marvellous script in which we still get the impression only gradually that this man's life is anything other than idyllic.
Like many American pictures of the 1960s it captures a marvellously elegiac atmosphere.
Definitely one of my all-time favourites.
The poster's tagline is hilariously unsubtle, and hardly encapsulates what the movie is about: "They had the pools - but he had their wives"!
- dene_kernohan
- Aug 16, 2000