Double Feature: PLAY IT AS IT LAYS & THE SWIMMER December 10, 2010

Double Feature: PLAY IT AS IT LAYS, 1972, Universal, 99 min. Director Frank Perry (DAVID AND LISA) delivered many edgy psychological classics, and none is more deserving of rediscovery than this rarely screened adaptation of Joan Didion’s bestseller, with a screenplay by Didion and her late husband, John Gregory Dunne. Tuesday Weld is at her best as fiercely intelligent Maria, an ex-model on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In-the-closet producer Anthony Perkins is her only friend and Adam Roarke is her estranged director-husband trying to jumpstart his career out of the biker-film ghetto. A scathing portrait of Hollywood in the early 1970s. [35mm]

THE SWIMMER, 1968, Sony Repertory, 94 min. One of the most unjustly neglected figures of the New Hollywood generation, director Frank Perry made 10 low-key, razor-sharp dissections of modern morals and relationships between 1962 and 1975. Based on John Cheever’s acclaimed novel, THE SWIMMER follows vigorous, middle-aged, upper-middle-class Burt Lancaster on a metaphoric journey swimming from backyard pool to backyard pool in his lush, upscale suburban neighborhood, headed toward a "home" that may no longer exist. A nostalgic portrait of regret and despair lying beneath the gemlike surface of suburbia - here represented by the sprawling, outlying suburbs of Connecticut - featuring one of Lancaster’s finest performances. [35mm]
Trailer

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