Deliverance | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical release poster by Bill Gold | |
Directed by | John Boorman |
Screenplay by | James Dickey |
Based on | Deliverance by James Dickey |
Produced by | John Boorman |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Vilmos Zsigmond |
Edited by | Tom Priestley |
Music by | Eric Weissberg |
Production company | Elmer Enterprises |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 109 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $2 million |
Box office | $46.1 million [1] |
Deliverance is a 1972 American thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman, and starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts. The screenplay was adapted by James Dickey from his 1970 novel of the same name. The film was a critical and box office success, earning three Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations.
Widely acclaimed as a landmark picture, the film is noted for a music scene near the beginning, with one of the city men playing "Dueling Banjos" on guitar with a banjo-picking country boy. It is also notorious for its brutal depiction of a sodomitical rape. In 2008, Deliverance was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [2] [3]
Four Atlanta businessmen—Lewis Medlock, Ed Gentry, Bobby Trippe, and Drew Ballinger—decide to canoe down a river in the remote northern Georgia wilderness before it is dammed. Lewis, an avid outdoorsman, is the leader; Ed has been on several trips but lacks Lewis's ego, while Bobby and Drew 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, with his guitar, engages a young banjo-playing boy in a musical duel. 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 pairs and their two canoes become separated. Ed and Bobby encounter a pair of mountain men emerging from the woods, one carrying a shotgun and missing 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 using his bow and arrow; Ed retrieves the gun and the other mountain man flees into the woods. After a heated debate between Lewis and Drew, Ed and Bobby vote to side with Lewis's 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.
The canoes collide on the rocks, throwing the three remaining men into the river. One of the canoes is smashed. Lewis breaks his femur and the others are washed ashore alongside him in a gorge. Lewis, who believes Drew has been 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 with a rifle; Ed clumsily shoots and manages to kill him, but falls backwards, stabbing himself with one of his own arrows in the process. The dead man seemingly has all his teeth, but on closer inspection, is revealed to be wearing dentures. Ed and Bobby weigh down the body in the river to ensure it will never be found, and when they encounter Drew's body downriver, they do the same.
Upon finally reaching the small town of Aintry, they take Lewis to the hospital. The men carefully concoct a cover story for the authorities about Drew's death, lying about their adventure to Sheriff Bullard in order to escape a possible double murder charge. The sheriff does not believe them, but has no evidence to arrest them and tells the men to not do this kind of thing again and to never come back. The trio vow to keep their story of death and survival a secret for the rest of their lives.
Some time after, a bloated hand rises from the lake - only to be revealed as a nightmare from the experience that has tormented Ed.
Ned Beatty's wife, Belinda Beatty, and director John Boorman's son, Charley Boorman, have brief appearances as the wife and young child of Jon Voight's character.
Deliverance was shot primarily in Rabun County in northeastern Georgia. The canoe scenes were filmed in the Tallulah Gorge southeast of Clayton and on the Chattooga River. This river 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. [4]
A scene was also shot at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church cemetery. This site has since been flooded and lies 130 feet (40 m) under the surface of Lake Jocassee, on the border between Oconee and Pickens counties in South Carolina. [5] [6] 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. [7] 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. [8]
Casting was by Lynn Stalmaster. Dickey had initially wanted Sam Peckinpah to direct the film. [7] Dickey also wanted Gene Hackman to portray Ed Gentry whereas Boorman wanted Lee Marvin to play the role. [7] Boorman also wanted Marlon Brando to play Lewis Medlock. [7] Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of Ed, [7] while both Donald Sutherland and Charlton Heston turned down the role of Lewis. [7] Other actors who were considered for the film included Robert Redford, Henry Fonda, George C. Scott and Warren Beatty. [7]
The film is infamous for the cost cutting by the studio in an effort to kill it [9] and having the actors perform their own stunts, such as Jon Voight notably climbing the cliff himself. [10] Reynolds requested to have one scene re-shot with himself in a canoe rather than a dummy as it tumbled over a real waterfall. [11] 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. [11] Reynolds asked "How'd it look?" and Boorman said, "It looked like a dummy falling over a waterfall." [11] Beatty almost drowned and Reynolds cracked his tailbone. [12]
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". [13] 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".
Several people have been credited with the phrase "squeal like a pig", the now-famous line spoken during the graphic rape scene. Ned Beatty said he thought of it while he and actor Bill McKinney (who played Beatty's rapist) were improvising the scene. [14] James Dickey's son, Christopher Dickey, wrote in his memoir about the film production, Summer of Deliverance, that because Boorman had rewritten so much dialogue for the scene one of the crewmen suggested that Beatty's character should just "squeal like a pig". [15] Boorman, in a DVD commentary he made for the film said the line was used because the studio wanted the male rape scene to be filmed in two ways: one for cinematic release and one that would be acceptable for television. As Boorman did not want to do that, he decided that the phrase "squeal like a pig", suggested by Rabun County liaison Frank Rickman, was a good replacement for the original dialogue in the script. [16] Reynolds later recalled the scene as so uncomfortable cameramen avoided watching, and Reynolds opted to interrupt the filming. Reynolds said, "I asked John Boorman, the director, 'Why did you let it go that long?' He said, 'I wanted to take it as far as I could with the audience, and I figured you'd run in when it got too far.'" [17]
The film's soundtrack brought new attention to the musical work "Dueling Banjos", which had been recorded numerous times since 1955. Only Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel were originally credited for the piece. The onscreen credits state that the song is an arrangement of the song "Feudin' Banjos", showing Combine Music Corp as the copyright owner. Songwriter and producer Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, who had written "Feudin' Banjos" in 1955, and recorded it with five-string banjo player Don Reno, filed a lawsuit for songwriting credit and a percentage of royalties. He was awarded both in a landmark copyright infringement case. [18] Smith asked Warner Bros. to include his name on the official soundtrack listing, but reportedly asked to be omitted from the film credits because he found the film offensive. [19]
Joe Boyd, who was producing the music for the movie Deliverance, offered "Duelling Banjos" to Bill Keith, but as Bill was travelling in Europe and wanted to visit a girl in Ireland, he turned it down suggesting Eric Weissberg instead. [20]
No credit was given for the film score. The film has a number of sparse, brooding passages of music scattered throughout, including several played on a synthesizer. Some prints of the movie omit much of this extra music.
Boorman was given a gold record for the "Dueling Banjos" hit single; this was later stolen from his house by the Dublin gangster Martin Cahill. Boorman recreated this scene in The General (1998), his biographical film about Cahill. [21]
Chart (1973) | Position |
---|---|
Australian Albums (Kent Music Report) [22] | 61 |
Deliverance was a box office success in the United States, becoming the fifth-highest grossing film of 1972, with a domestic take of over $46 million. [1] The film's financial success continued the following year, when it went on to earn $18 million in North American "distributor rentals" (receipts). [23]
Deliverance was well received by critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1972. [24] [25] [26] On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 89% rating based on reviews from 65 critics, with an average rating of 8.40/10. The site's consensus states: "Given primal verve by John Boorman's unflinching direction and Burt Reynolds' star-making performance, Deliverance is a terrifying adventure." [27] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. [28]
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film four stars out of four and wrote, "It is a gripping horror story that at times may force you to look away from the screen, but it is so beautifully filmed that your eyes will eagerly return." [29] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "an engrossing adventure, a demonstrable labor of love" carried by Voight and Reynolds. [30] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film was "certainly a distinctive and gripping piece of work, with a deliberately brooding, ominous tone and visual style that put you in a grave, fearful frame of mind, almost in spite of yourself." [31]
Not all reviews were positive. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a mixed 2.5 stars out of a possible 4. He declared the film was "admittedly effective on the level of simple adventure" and had good performances, particularly from Voight and Reynolds. However, Ebert also wrote Deliverance "totally fails [in] its attempt to make some kind of significant statement about its action [...] It's possible to consider civilized men in a confrontation with the wilderness without throwing in rapes, cowboy-and-Indian stunts and pure exploitative sensationalism." [32]
Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote that the setting was "majestic" but it was "in the fleshing out that the script fumbles, and with it the direction and acting." [33] Vincent Canby of The New York Times was also generally negative, calling the film "a disappointment" because "so many of Dickey's lumpy narrative ideas remain in his screenplay that John Boorman's screen version becomes a lot less interesting than it has any right to be." [34]
"Dueling Banjos" won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance. The film was selected by The New York Times as one of The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, while the viewers of Channel 4 in the United Kingdom voted it #45 on a list of The 100 Greatest Films. Reynolds later called it "the best film I've ever been in". [35] However, he stated that the rape scene went "too far". [17]
Following the film's release, Governor Jimmy Carter established a state film commission to encourage television and movie production in Georgia. The state has "become one of the top five production destinations in the U.S". [43] Tourism increased to Rabun County by the tens of thousands after the film's release. By 2012, tourism was the largest source of revenue in the county, and rafting had developed as a $20 million industry in the region. [43] Jon Voight's stunt double for this film, Claude Terry, later purchased equipment used in the movie from Warner Brothers. He founded a whitewater rafting adventure company on the Chattooga River, Southeastern Expeditions. [44] Payson Kennedy, the stunt double for Ned Beatty, established the Nantahala Outdoor Center with his wife and Horace Holden along the Nantahala River in Swain County, North Carolina, in 1972, the same year that Deliverance was released. [45]
Jonathan Vincent Voight is an American actor. He has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and four Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2019, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Films in which Voight has appeared have grossed more than $5.2 billion worldwide.
Rabun County is the north-easternmost county in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 16,883, up from 16,276 in 2010. The county seat is Clayton. With an average annual rainfall of over 70 inches (1,800 mm), Rabun County has the title of the rainiest county in Georgia and is one of the rainiest counties east of the Cascades. The year 2018 was the wettest on record in the county's history. The National Weather Service cooperative observation station in northwest Rabun's Germany Valley measured 116.48 inches of rain during the year. During 2020, the Germany Valley NWS station reported a yearly precipitation total of 100.19 inches.
Zardoz is a 1974 science fantasy film written, produced, and directed by John Boorman and starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling. It depicts a post-apocalyptic world where barbarians worship the stone idol Zardoz while growing food for a hidden elite, the Eternals. The Brutal Zed becomes curious about Zardoz, and his curiosity forces a confrontation between the two camps.
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. was an American actor and icon of 1970s American popular culture. Reynolds first rose to prominence when he starred in television series, such as Gunsmoke (1962–1965), Hawk (1966), and Dan August (1970–1971). He had leading roles in films, such as Navajo Joe (1966) and 100 Rifles (1969), and his breakthrough role was as Lewis Medlock in Deliverance (1972).
James Lafayette Dickey was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966. He also received the Order of the South award.
Sir John Boorman is a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for directing feature films such as Point Blank (1967), Hell in the Pacific (1968), Deliverance (1972), Zardoz (1974), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), Excalibur (1981), The Emerald Forest (1985), Hope and Glory (1987), The General (1998), The Tailor of Panama (2001) and Queen and Country (2014).
Ned Thomas Beatty was an American actor. In a career that spanned five decades, he appeared in more than 160 films. Throughout his career, Beatty gained a reputation for being "the busiest actor in Hollywood". His film appearances included Deliverance (1972), White Lightning (1973), All the President's Men (1976), Network (1976), Superman (1978), Superman II (1980), Back to School (1986), Rudy (1993), Shooter (2007), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Rango (2011). He also had the series regular role of Stanley Bolander in the first three seasons of the hit NBC TV drama Homicide: Life on the Street.
Daniel Ronald "Ronny" Cox is an American actor, singer and songwriter. His best-known roles include Drew Ballinger in Deliverance (1972), George Apple in Apple's Way (1974–1975), Ozark Bule in Bound for Glory (1976), Colonel Kerby in Taps (1981), Lieutenant Andrew Bogomil in Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Dick Jones in RoboCop (1987), Franklin Reed in Family Ties (1986), Vilos Cohaagen in Total Recall (1990), The President in Captain America (1990), Justin in Age of Dinosaurs (2013), Vice President Kinsey in several episodes of Stargate SG-1, and Captain Edward Jellico in several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1992) and Star Trek: Prodigy (2022). Cox is also active as a musician, performing over 100 times per year at festivals and theaters each year as of 2012.
Without a Paddle is a 2004 American adventure comedy film directed by Steven Brill, written by Jay Leggett and Mitch Rouse, and based on a story by Harris Goldberg, Tom Nursall, and Fred Wolf. The film stars Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, Dax Shepard, Ethan Suplee, Abraham Benrubi, Rachel Blanchard, Christina Moore, Bonnie Somerville, Ray Baker, and Burt Reynolds. It tells the story of three reunited childhood friends going on a trip up a remote river in order to search for the loot of long-lost airplane hijacker D. B. Cooper.
Lake Jocassee is a 7,500-acre (30 km2), 300-foot (91 m) deep reservoir in northwest South Carolina. It was created in 1973 by the state in partnership with Duke Power. The lake is known for the clean and cold Appalachian mountain rivers that flow into it, keeping its waters cool and clear year-round. The Jocassee Dam, which forms the lake, is 385 feet (117 m) high and 1,750 feet (530 m) long. The lake is within Devils Fork State Park.
Billy Redden is an American actor, best known for his role as a backwoods mountain boy in the 1972 film Deliverance. He played Lonnie, a banjo-playing teenager in north Georgia, who played the noted "Dueling Banjos" with Drew Ballinger.
Eric Weissberg was an American singer, banjo player, and multi-instrumentalist, whose most commercially successful recording was his banjo solo in "Dueling Banjos", featured as the theme of the film Deliverance (1972) and released as a single that reached number 2 in the United States and Canada in 1973.
White Lightning is a 1973 American action film directed by Joseph Sargent, written by William W. Norton, and starring Burt Reynolds, Jennifer Billingsley, Ned Beatty, Bo Hopkins, R. G. Armstrong and Diane Ladd. It marked Laura Dern's film debut.
"Dueling Banjos" is a bluegrass composition by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith. The song was composed in 1954 by Smith as a banjo instrumental he called "Feudin' Banjos"; it contained riffs from Smith, recorded in 1955 playing a four-string plectrum banjo and accompanied by five-string bluegrass banjo player Don Reno. The composition's first wide-scale airing was on a 1963 television episode of The Andy Griffith Show called "Briscoe Declares for Aunt Bee", in which it is played by visiting musical family the Darlings, along with Griffith himself.
The Coosawattee River is a 49.3-mile-long (79.3 km) river located in northwestern Georgia, United States.
Sharky's Machine is a 1981 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by Burt Reynolds, who stars in the title role. It is the film adaptation of William Diehl's 1978 novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Gerald Di Pego. It also stars Vittorio Gassman, Brian Keith, Charles Durning, Earl Holliman, Bernie Casey, Henry Silva, Darryl Hickman, Richard Libertini, Rachel Ward and Joseph Mascolo.
Deliverance (1970) is the debut novel of American writer James Dickey, who had previously published poetry. It was adapted into the 1972 film of the same name directed by John Boorman.
Charles Orme was a British film producer. He worked regularly with Powell & Pressburger, Ralph Thomas, Basil Dearden and John Boorman. He has over 50 credits on a number of classics including The 39 Steps (1959), Khartoum (1966), Deliverance (1972), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) and The Omen (1976). He was an original member of the multiple-award-winning Powell & Pressburger production team known as The Archers. He was a production assistant, production manager and assistant director on many of their classic productions, including The Red Shoes (1948), The Small Back Room (1949), Gone to Earth (1950) and The Elusive Pimpernel (1950), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955), The Battle of the River Plate (1956) and Ill Met by Moonlight (1957).
Duck ague, also buck fever or buck ague, is a hunting term for the yips, in which a marksman or hunter, before taking a shot with either a gun or bow in a tense situation, loses mental quietude and misses the shot.
Herbert Lee "Cowboy" Coward was an American actor. He played one of two sadistic mountain men in John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance, and several of his lines became infamous in pop culture.