Based on writer John Cheever’s surreal short-story exploration of the male American Dream, this 1968 film directed by Frank Perry and Sydney Pollack is a controversial cult classic that usually divides a room of viewers in half—yet, love it or hate it, you can’t stop watching. Burt Lancaster, looking excellently fit for 55, is Ned, an upper-middle-class Connecticut businessman who one day searches for meaning in his life by swimming home from a party through all of his neighbor’s pools. Along the way, he encounters remembrances and regrets, and eventually, he emerges in a very different world from the one he left.
Sun., June 26, 6 p.m.; Wed., June 29, 8 p.m., 2011
