The Swimmer (1968)

Frolicking with the babysitter.

So I watched The Swimmer finally after all these years. Burt Lancaster as a surprisingly healthy, athletic rich WASP who wears only a swimsuit. He out somewhere dressed like this for some reason and decides to swim home by going from swimming pool to swimming pool---a river of swimming pools leading to his house on the hill.

"That's more hiking than swimming," someone comments, and he's not wearing shoes. It seems that his life has fallen apart but he doesn't remember any of it. His friends look disturbed when he tells them his daughters are home playing tennis.

As it progresses, the people whose swimming pools he uses are less and less happy to see him. He's not as pitiful as you might have suspected. There's a woman he had been sleeping with while married who he cleverly dumped in a fancy restaurant so she wouldn't make a scene, he hits on the girl who used to babysitter for him, a Black chauffeur (Bernie Hamilton) gives him a ride up the driveway and we find out he's a racist; he's an anti-Semite. He crashes a pool party of a nouveau riche couple he had always snubbed and he stops at a public swimming pool where he runs into locals he still owes money to.

He stops at the home of an elderly nudist couple who mercifully remain seated and concealed, but Lancaster has thoughtfully removed his swimsuit and we see him walking away from the camera.

It's clear that his life has fallen apart and they hint at why, but it's not clear how he happens to be back in the old neighborhood or what sent him off the deep end. Based on a short story by John Cheever.