| Deliverance | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster byBill 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 |
Deliverance is a 1972 Americanthriller film directed and produced byJohn Boorman from a screenplay byJames Dickey, who adapted it from his own1970 novel. It follows four businessmen fromAtlanta who venture into the remotenorthern Georgia wilderness towhitewater canoe theCahulawassee River before it is dammed, only to find themselves in danger from the area's inhabitants and nature. It starsJon Voight,Burt Reynolds,Ned Beatty, andRonny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts.
Deliverance was a critical and commercial success. It earned threeAcademy Award nominations and fiveGolden 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 amountain man. In 2008, it was selected for preservation in the United StatesNational Film Registry by theLibrary of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[1][2]
In retrospective analysis, the film has since garnered criticism from journalists, historians, and citizens ofRabun County, Georgia, where the film was shot,[3][4] for its portrayal of the people and culture ofAppalachia,[5][6][7] its promotion ofAppalachian stereotypes in film and television,[8][9][10] and even has been labeled as an anti-working class and an anti-rural film.[7][11]
FourAtlanta businessmen decide towhitewater canoe down theCahulawassee 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 offered 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 a disagreement, Bobby is forced by the men to undress and while the unarmed man rapes him, demands that he "squeal like a pig". Ed tries to help, despite being 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 flooded river 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 needingamputation 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.
Beatty's wife Belinda and Boorman's sonCharley briefly appear as the wife and son of Voight's character in the final scene.
Casting was byLynn Stalmaster. Dickey had initially wantedSam Peckinpah to direct the film.[12] Dickey also wantedGene Hackman to portray Ed Gentry, whereas Boorman wantedLee Marvin to play the role.[12] Boorman also wantedMarlon Brando to play Lewis Medlock.[12]Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of Ed,[12] while bothDonald Sutherland andCharlton Heston turned down the role of Lewis.[12] Other actors who were considered for the film includedRobert Redford,Henry Fonda,George C. Scott andWarren Beatty.[12]
Deliverance was shot primarily inRabun County in northeastern Georgia. The canoe scenes were filmed in theTallulah Gorge southeast ofClayton on theChattooga River, which divides the northeastern corner ofGeorgia from the northwestern corner ofSouth Carolina. Additional scenes were shot inSalem, South Carolina. Filming took place from May to August 1971.[13]
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 ofLake Jocassee, on the border betweenOconee andPickens counties in South Carolina.[14][15] The dam shown under construction isJocassee Dam near Salem, South Carolina.
During the filming of the canoe scene, authorJames Dickey showed up inebriated and entered into a bitter argument with producer-directorJohn 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.[12] 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 theCoosawattee River, which was dammed in the 1970s and contained several dangerous whitewater rapids before being flooded byCarters Lake.[16]
The film is infamous for the cost cutting by the studio in an effort to kill it[17] and having the actors perform their own stunts, such as Jon Voight notably climbing the cliff himself.[18] Reynolds requested to have one scene re-shot with himself in a canoe rather than a dummy as it tumbled over a real waterfall.[19] 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.[19] Reynolds asked "How'd it look?" and Boorman said, "It looked like a dummy falling over a waterfall."[19] Beatty almost drowned and Reynolds cracked his tailbone.[20]
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".[21] 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.[22] 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".[23] Boorman, in aDVD 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.[24] 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.'"[25]
Thefilm's soundtrack brought new attention to the musical work "Dueling Banjos", which had been recorded numerous times since 1955. OnlyEric 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 producerArthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, who had written "Feudin' Banjos" in 1955, and recorded it with five-string banjo playerDon Reno, filed a lawsuit for songwriting credit and a percentage of royalties. He was awarded both in a landmark copyright infringement case.[26] 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.[27]
Joe Boyd, who was producing the music for the movieDeliverance, offered "Duelling Banjos" toBill Keith, who turned it down and suggested Eric Weissberg instead.[28]
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 gangsterMartin Cahill. Boorman recreated this scene inThe General (1998), his biographical film about Cahill.[29]
| Chart (1973) | Position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)[30] | 61 |
Deliverance was a box office success in the United States, becoming thefourth-highest grossing film of 1972, with a domestic take of over $46 million.[31] The film's financial success continued the following year, when it went on to earn $18 million in North American "distributor rentals" (receipts).[32]
Deliverance received generally positive but mixed reviews by critics, and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1972.[33][34][35]
Contemporary criticGene Siskel of theChicago 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."[36]Charles Champlin of theLos Angeles Times called it "an engrossing adventure, a demonstrable labor of love" carried by Voight and Reynolds.[37] Gary Arnold ofThe 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."[38]
Not all reviews were positive.Roger Ebert of theChicago 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 wroteDeliverance "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."[39]
Arthur D. Murphy ofVariety wrote that the setting was "majestic" but it was "in the fleshing out that the script fumbles, and with it the direction and acting."[40]
Vincent Canby ofThe 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."[41]
Pauline Kael writing forThe New Yorker was critical of the film and wrote that the movie demonstrated that it could be effective "even if you are always aware of the actors' acting and don't really believe in a single character."[42]
On review aggregation websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 90% rating based on reviews from 68 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."[43]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[44]
Following the film's release, Georgia GovernorJimmy Carter established a state film commission to encourage television and movie production there. By 2012 the state had "become one of the top five production destinations in the U.S".[45] 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.[45] 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.[46] Payson Kennedy, the stunt double for Ned Beatty, established the Nantahala Outdoor Center with his wife and Horace Holden along theNantahala River inSwain County, North Carolina, in 1972, the same year thatDeliverance was released.[47]
"Dueling Banjos" won the 1974Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance. The film was selected byThe New York Times as one ofThe Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, while the viewers ofChannel 4 in the United Kingdom voted it #45 on a list ofThe 100 Greatest Films. Reynolds later called it "the best film I've ever been in".[48] However, he stated that the rape scene went "too far".[25]
FilmmakerBong Joon Ho has citedDeliverance as one of his top four favorite films.[49]
In 2025,The Hollywood Reporter listedDeliverance as having the best stunts of 1972.[50]
