Deliverance
Deliverance is a 1972 American thriller film directed and produced by John Boorman from a screenplay by James Dickey, who adapted it from his own 1970 novel. It follows four businessmen from Atlanta who venture into the remote northern Georgia wilderness to whitewater canoe the Cahulawassee River before it is dammed, only to find themselves in danger from the area's inhabitants and nature. It stars Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts.
Deliverance was a critical and commercial success. It earned three Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations, and grossed $46.1 million on a budget of $2 million. It became a popular culture landmark for a scene featuring Cox's character playing "Dueling Banjos" on guitar with a banjo-picking country boy, and garnered notoriety for a scene in which Beatty's character is brutally raped by a mountain man. In 2008, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In retrospective analysis, the film has since garnered criticism from journalists, historians, and citizens of Rabun County, Georgia, where the film was shot, for its portrayal of the people and culture of Appalachia, its promotion of Appalachian stereotypes in film and television, and even has been labeled as an anti-working class and an anti-rural film.
Plot
Four Atlanta businessmen decide to whitewater canoe down the Cahulawassee River in the remote northern Georgia wilderness before it is dammed. Lewis Medlock is an avid outdoorsman and survivalist who leads the group, and Ed Gentry has been on several trips but lacks Lewis's ego, while Bobby Trippe and Drew Ballinger are novices. En route to their launch site, the men, in particular Bobby, are rude toward the locals, who are hostile to the "city boys". At a local gas station, Drew engages a young banjo-playing boy in a musical duel with his guitar. The duel is mutually enjoyable, and some of the locals break into dance at the sound of it. However, the boy does not acknowledge Drew when prompted for a friendly handshake.The four friends travel in two canoes, which briefly become separated. Ed and Bobby encounter a pair of mountain men emerging from the woods, one carrying a shotgun and missing his two front teeth. Following an argument, Bobby is forced by the men to undress and the unarmed man rapes him, demanding he "squeal like a pig", while Ed is tied to a tree and held at gunpoint. Lewis sneaks up and kills the rapist with his bow and arrow while Ed snatches the shotgun from the other mountain man, who flees into the woods. After a heated debate between Lewis and Drew, Ed and Bobby side with Lewis' plan to bury the body and continue on as if nothing had happened. The four continue downriver but the canoes reach a dangerous stretch of rapids. As Drew and Ed reach the rapids in the lead canoe, Drew falls into the water without his life jacket.
The canoes collide on the rocks, throwing the three remaining men into the river and smashing one of the canoes. Lewis breaks his thigh bone and the other two are washed ashore alongside him in a gorge. Lewis, who believes Drew fell out of the boat because he was shot, encourages Ed to climb to the top of the gorge and ambush the other mountain man, whom they believe to be stalking them from above. Ed reaches an overhang and hides out until morning, when a man appears above him and aims a rifle at him; a panicked Ed clumsily shoots and manages to kill the man, but falls backwards onto one of his own arrows. An inspection of the body finds that the man has all of his teeth, but he evidently is wearing dentures. Ed and Bobby weigh down the body in the soon to be floodedriver to ensure it will never be found, then do the same to Drew's broken body when they encounter it downriver shortly after. The three men carefully concoct a cover story for local authorities about Drew's death
Upon finally reaching the small town of Aintry, a critically injured Lewis is taken by ambulance to the hospital. Ed and Bobby lie about their adventure to Sheriff Bullard in order to escape a possible triple murder charge. Their cover is almost blown when Ed thinks he has overheard Bobby secretly telling the sheriff the truth, but Bobby convinces him otherwise. Ed and Bobby visit Lewis in the hospital, where he faces a risk of needing amputation of his injured leg. While being watched over by a police officer, a worried Ed whispers to Lewis that they need to change their cover story. A coy Lewis relaxes him by pretending that head trauma has wiped his memory clear of everything after the canoe collision. Sheriff Bullard does not believe the men and reveals that Deputy Queen is suspicious of them because his brother-in-law went hunting a few days earlier and has not returned. However, he has no evidence to arrest them, and instead tells them never to do "this kind of thing again" and to never come back to the area.
The three men part, vowing to keep their story of death and survival a secret for the rest of their lives.
Ed reunites with his wife and son. Some time after, a bloated hand rises from the lake, only to be revealed as a nightmare from the experience tormenting Ed.
Cast
- Jon Voight as Ed Gentry
- Burt Reynolds as Lewis Medlock
- Ned Beatty as Bobby Trippe
- Ronny Cox as Drew Ballinger
- Bill McKinney as Mountain Man
- Herbert "Cowboy" Coward as Toothless Man
- James Dickey as Sheriff Bullard
- Billy Redden as Lonnie, the banjo boy
- Macon McCalman as Deputy Queen, whose brother-in-law is missing
Production
Casting
Casting was by Lynn Stalmaster. Dickey had initially wanted Sam Peckinpah to direct the film. Dickey also wanted Gene Hackman to portray Ed Gentry, whereas Boorman wanted Lee Marvin to play the role. Boorman also wanted Marlon Brando to play Lewis Medlock. Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of Ed, while both Donald Sutherland and Charlton Heston turned down the role of Lewis. Other actors who were considered for the film included Robert Redford, Henry Fonda, George C. Scott and Warren Beatty.Filming
Deliverance was shot primarily in Rabun County in northeastern Georgia. The canoe scenes were filmed in the Tallulah Gorge southeast of Clayton on the Chattooga River, which divides the northeastern corner of Georgia from the northwestern corner of South Carolina. Additional scenes were shot in Salem, South Carolina. Filming took place from May to August 1971.A scene was also shot at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church cemetery. This site has since been flooded and lies under the surface of Lake Jocassee, on the border between Oconee and Pickens counties in South Carolina. The dam shown under construction is Jocassee Dam near Salem, South Carolina.
During the filming of the canoe scene, author James Dickey showed up inebriated and entered into a bitter argument with producer-director John Boorman, who had rewritten Dickey's script. They allegedly had a brief fistfight in which Boorman, a much smaller man than Dickey, suffered a broken nose and four shattered teeth. Dickey was thrown off the set, but no charges were filed against him. The two reconciled and became good friends, and Boorman gave Dickey a cameo role as the sheriff at the end of the film.
The inspiration for the Cahulawassee River was the Coosawattee River, which was dammed in the 1970s and contained several dangerous whitewater rapids before being flooded by Carters Lake.
Stunts
The film is infamous for the cost cutting by the studio in an effort to kill it and having the actors perform their own stunts, such as Jon Voight notably climbing the cliff himself. Reynolds requested to have one scene re-shot with himself in a canoe rather than a dummy as it tumbled over a real waterfall. Reynolds recalled his shoulder and head hitting rocks and floating downstream with all of his clothes torn off, then waking up with director Boorman at his bedside. Reynolds asked "How'd it look?" and Boorman said, "It looked like a dummy falling over a waterfall." Beatty almost drowned and Reynolds cracked his tailbone.Regarding the courage of the four main actors in the movie performing their own stunts without insurance protection, Dickey was quoted as saying all of them "had more guts than a burglar". In a nod to their stunt-performing audacity, early in the movie Lewis says, "Insurance? I've never been insured in my life. I don't believe in insurance. There's no risk".