This week in New York City, temperatures scraped one hundred degrees. Everyone I know (of all ages) was falling over, dehydrated, delirious, sweating within an inch of their lives. The thing I most wanted to do, during these past few days, was flee the bonds of my workday and dunk into a swimming pool. I’d have taken any one; I’d have purchased a day pass at a nearby hotel, even braved one of the municipal public pools. I’d even have brave the increasing existential despair of Burt Lancaster’s pool-hopping venture in Frank Perry’s 1968 The Swimmer. That‘s how desperate I was.
I didn’t do any of this, but it got me thinking. Ah, the swimming pool! Everyone wants one, no one likes cleaning theirs. And it’s a lot harder to clean your pool if someone dies in it! Which brings us to the topic of today’s list.
There are a great many crime movies set poolside; for a comprehensive analysis, I recommend checking out Halley Sutton’s thoughts on the subject. I’ve put together a brief list of great swimming pools-turned-crime scenes in crime movies, ranked in order of, honestly, how nice they are. Like… I’d still think about swimming in most of these, knowing what I know about them.
All right, that’s enough chitchat. Dive in with me.
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
WOULD I swim in Norma Desmond’s very-unclean pool? Probably no, actually. Looks like a bacterial infection waiting to happen. It wouldn’t even look good if the first shot of it hadn’t been with William Holden’s bleeding body floating in it.
The Great Gatsby (2013)
Even when it’s not dressed up for a party, Gatsby’s classical-style pool is not what I pictured when I read Fitzgerald’s novel. The issue I had with this movie is that it doesn’t really feel Long Island enough? Anyway, the pool is fine, but, like a lot of the mise-en-scene in this film, it feels out of place. I’d swim in it, but only with a gun to my head.
The Great Gatsby (1974)
This is a much more Long Island-looking pool. On a cloudy day, it looks like it would be freezing. This is the kind of authenticity I crave.
A Bigger Splash (2015)
Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash is basically La Piscine but set in Italy. The pool is as equally nice as the one in La Piscine. Don’t make me pick between France and Italy, please.
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood puts its pool to use in one of the greatest movie climaxes of all time. And when it’s not the setting for vanquishing a murderous teenager, it’s a pretty chill time, as you can see here.
Swimming Pool (2003)
A gorgeous pool at a gorgeous villa in the South of France… would you put up with psychosexual overtures from Ludivine Sagnier to get to lay alongside it?
La Piscine (1969)
A pool overlooking the beach! I’ll take it! Even though… In La Piscine, two vacationing lovers (the real life ex-couple Alain Delon and Romy Schneider) are hanging out at a villa along the French Riviera when the arrival of Maurice Ronet and his daughter Jane Birkin cause passions to flare and tensions to rise… with disastrous consequences. Every time I watch this movie, I think about how *I* wouldn’t murder anyone by this pool.
