Deliverance is a 1972 Warner Bros.
motion picture drama directed by John Boorman. Principal cast members include
Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, Jon Voight, and, in his film debut, Ned Beatty. The film is based on a
1970 novel of the same name by
American author James Dickey, who has a
small role in the film as a Sheriff.
Widely acclaimed as a landmark film,[citation needed] Deliverance is the story of four suburban professional men from Georgia on a weekend
canoe and camping trip. The film is noted for the memorable music scene near the beginning
that sets the tone for what lies ahead: a trip into unknown and potentially dangerous territory. In the scene, set at a rural
gas station, character Drew Ballinger plays the instrumental "Dueling Banjos" on his guitar with a retarded hillbilly youth named
Lonnie (implied as being an inbred albino in the novel,
portrayed by Billy Redden in the film). The boy eventually outplays Drew with his banjo.
The song 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," whilst the viewers of Channel 4 in the United Kingdom voted it 45 in a list of The 100 Greatest Films.[citation needed]
Plot
Four Atlanta men — Lewis, Ed, Bobby, and Drew — (played by Reynolds, Voight, Beatty and Cox, respectively) decide to
canoe down the fictional Cahulawassee River in the remote Georgia wilderness, before it is flooded over by the upcoming construction of a dam and lake. The trip turns into a fight for survival when local hillbillies
attack two of the men. The men are forced to kill two hillbillies while losing one of their own as well.
Plot summary
The film begins with a montage of river and dam building images of the Cahulawassee
River, with a conversation between the four men acting as a voice-over. The
conversation reveals the impending damming of the river by a power company and the efforts of Lewis (Reynolds) to convince the
other three to take a weekend canoe trip before the damming is complete.
On the first day of the trip, the four men pull into a rural village that seems deserted. While filling up their vehicles with
gasoline, one of the men (Drew, played by Cox), engages in a guitar-banjo "duel" with Lonnie, a
young local boy.
At this village, Lewis arranges to pay three men to drive their cars down to the fictional town of Aintry, located downriver,
so they can drive home after reaching Aintry by canoe. More of the characters is revealed by Bobby's arrogant remarks about the
'genetic deficiencies' of the locals, and Lewis' reckless driving through the forest at high speed. After finding an appropriate
place, the four men begin canoeing down the river. As they set off, the men pass under a bridge with Lonnie standing looking at
them, refusing to acknowledge Drew's enthusiastic waves.
The first day of their journey passes uneventfully, with the men learning to ride their canoes down rapids. Throughout the day it becomes clear that Lewis is an experienced outdoorsman. Bobby (Beatty), despite
being overweight, manages to perform well and becomes enthusiastic about the experience. Later, Lewis successfully shoots a fish
with an arrow to serve for dinner, using a recurve bow.
The men camp on the shoreline of the river on the first night, despite Lewis wondering whether someone could be watching them.
The following day, Ed (Voight) wakes up early and goes hunting. He encounters a deer, but is so
nervous that his arrow misses despite the short range. Hiding his loss of nerve, he complains to the others on his return that he
couldn't find anything to hunt. Lewis then mentions that some archers have trouble shooting an
animal because they cannot push themselves to actually fire upon a live target - what he calls "Buck Fever". Ed acknowledges that
such a condition is "psychological".
The second day of the trip begins with Ed and Bobby starting off together before Drew and Lewis had finished packing. Bobby
has become less enthusiastic about the experience due to his insect bites. The two continue for some time without sighting Drew
and Lewis behind them.
After stopping on the shore, Ed and Bobby then encounter a pair of hillbillies (the
Toothless Man played by Herbert 'Cowboy' Coward and the Mountain Man played by
Bill McKinney), one of whom is armed with a shotgun. Their attempt to engage in friendly
conversation with the two men backfires immediately, when Ed presumes that the two hillbillies might be concealing an
illegal whisky still. At gunpoint, the hillbillies force Ed and Bobby further into the woods.
In a famous scene, Ed is tied to a tree with his own belt and cut by one of the hillbillies' knives, with Bobby forced to strip
before being humiliated and brutally sodomized by one hillbilly. Attention is then turned to Ed, the other hillbilly stating that
Ed has "got a real purty mouth".
Before anything can happen to Ed, Drew and Lewis show up. Armed with his bow, Lewis shoots Bobby's rapist, causing the other
hillbilly to drop his shotgun and flee. The rapist dies from Lewis' arrow after about a minute of agony.
At this point, a heated argument develops between Drew and Lewis about whether to take the body with them to Aintry and tell
the authorities what happened, or bury the dead hillbilly and hope the incident goes undiscovered. Drew argues fiercely for
telling the authorities, but Lewis argues for a burial. Lewis' argument is that they will be tried for murder and that any local
jurors might well be related to the dead man. He also points out they might be followed by the surviving hillbilly and others,
and carrying the corpse will slow them down. He insists that no one will find the grave of the dead hillbilly since it will
shortly be covered by the water of the dammed lake. The matter is put to a vote. Bobby, who is restrained after rushing towards
the corpse, sides with Lewis, not wanting anyone to find out about what happened to him. The vote ultimately falls upon Ed, who
agrees that they should bury him. The four men then find an appropriate place to bury the body. The strain shows as they struggle
to keep the body buried. They hurry back to their canoes to continue their trip.
Drew, still distraught about what has happened, suddenly clutches his head and falls out of the canoe during a dangerous
stretch of rapids. Although left ambiguous why he fell, Lewis repeatedly yells out that Drew
has been shot. Before they can begin searching for him, both canoes enter an even more dangerous and very steep series of rapids.
The canoes collide and one of them splits apart, with the remaining three men washed down the rapids together.
The three then make their way to a rock ledge on the side of a canyon. Lewis has a compound
fracture of his right leg. He continues to assert that Drew had been shot by the remaining
Hillbilly, and that it is now up to Ed to kill the man before he shoots them all. Armed with his bow, Ed climbs the side of the
canyon and reaches the top in the middle of the night.
After a fitful night's sleep, Ed wakes to see a man armed with a rifle walking nearby and peering into the canyon where Lewis
and Bobby are. Ed picks up his bow and draws an arrow, but, as with the deer the day before, finds he cannot keep the bow steady.
The man then turns his rifle onto Ed and the two fire at one another simultaneously. The man misses, but the bullet's
ricochet forces Ed to fall backwards onto one of his arrows which then pierces his side. The
hillbilly approaches Ed to finish him off, but then collapses. Ed sees that his arrow struck the hillbilly in the neck and killed
him.
When he inspects the body, Ed is horrified to discover that, unlike the surviving hillbilly, the dead man does not have
missing front teeth, only to discover that the man wore false front teeth.
Ed lowers the hillbilly's body down the canyon by rope. He then tries to climb down with the rope, but it snaps, throwing both
Ed and the body into the water below. Ed survives and takes the body over to Bobby and Lewis. Despite the false teeth, they
remain unsure as to if the body is that of the surviving hillbilly. They tie a heavy rock to the man's body and throw him into
the water. Lewis, unconscious with pain and with his leg braced by a paddle, lays inside the remaining canoe while Bobby and Ed
continue paddling it downriver.
Shortly afterward, they discover Drew's twisted body (another famous image from the movie). A cursory study of his body shows
no sign of what caused his death, but they reason that forensic experts would certainly be able to tell if he had been shot.
Opting to continue covering up what happened, they weigh down Drew's body as well and sink him into the river.
When the three surviving men arrive in Aintry, Ed finds that their cars have been delivered as arranged. Before approaching
the authorities, both Bobby and Ed agree to cover up most of their experiences and say that Drew's disappearance and Lewis'
injury were caused in the final set of rapids before Aintry (the plan being to deter the authorities from searching further up
the river). The authorities (one of which, the Sheriff, was played by author James Dickey)
become suspicious when parts of the canoe are found further upriver from where they said the incident occurred. Lacking any
evidence, the three are not charged with anything, but warned never to return to the area. Ed and Bobby drive the cars back to
Atlanta, leaving Lewis recovering in a local hospital. Bobby sternly tells Ed 'I don't think I'll see you for a while'.
Ed returns home to his wife and family, but then dreams of a man's hand rising from a lake, forcing him awake - an indication
that he will face a long struggle to find 'deliverance' from the nightmare journey.
Background and production
Deliverance was shot in the Tallulah Gorge in Tallulah Falls, Georgia and on the Chattooga River,
dividing the states of Georgia and South
Carolina. Additional scenes were shot as well in Clemson, South Carolina.
Since the film's release, more than thirty people have drowned attempting to recreate the canoe trip along the section of the
river where the film was shot.[citation needed] The rapids within both book and film become a major symbol and plot device
to reflect the natural dangers of the untamed wilderness in the face of inexperienced urban
outsiders.
Stunts
The film is famous for cutting costs by not insuring the production and having the actors do their own stunts (most notably,
Jon Voight climbed the cliff himself.) In one scene, the stunt coordinator decided that a scene showing a canoe with a dummy of
Burt Reynolds in it looked phony; he said it looked "like a canoe with a dummy in it." Reynolds begged to have the scene re-shot
with himself actually in the canoe rather than the dummy. After shooting the scene, Reynolds, coughing up river water, asked how
the scene looked. The director responded, "like a canoe with a dummy in it."
Regarding the courage of the four main actors in the movie doing 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."
Crew
- Director: John Boorman
- Producer: John Boorman
- Original story: James Dickey from his novel
- Screenplay adaptation: James Dickey
- Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond
- Music: Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell - Dueling
Banjos (1955 composition by Arthur "Guitar Boogie"
Smith)
Cast
Director John Boorman cast Reynolds as Lewis without having seen any of his previous acting work. Instead he was cast based on
an appearance on the Tonight Show. Boorman admired how Reynolds remained cool and
stayed in control of the situation, the qualities he was looking for in the part of Lewis.[citation needed]Billy
Redden, who played the banjo playing boy, could not really play the banjo. Another young banjo player knelt behind him and
reached around Redden's chest to reach the banjo, with Redden wearing a specially made shirt that made the man's arms appear to
be Redden's. Additionally, the shot was filmed from angles that made it impossible to see the musician behind Redden on the
porch.
One local was played by Randall Leece Deal, a real convicted moonshiner. In 2006, he obtained a pardon for a conspiracy
conviction from President George W. Bush.[1]
Ed's son and wife (seen near the end of the movie) were played respectively by John Boorman's son Charley Boorman and Ned Beatty's wife (at the time).
Differences from the novel
Although the film closely follows the novel, some sections are different. Examples include the character description of Ed (in
the novel, Ed was bald and in his late 40s), the missing introduction (explaining why they
decided to go on a canoe trip instead of playing golf), and an epilogue after the tragedy.
In the film, only Bobby's line of work is mentioned (he's an insurance salesman). The novel additionally reveals that Ed is a
graphic designer or art director for an advertising agency, Drew works as a sales representative for a large Atlanta-based soft
drink manufacturer (presumably The Coca-Cola Company), and Lewis is simply an unspecified
white-collar worker. The first section of the book describes a day at the office for Ed, which (except for the opening voiceover)
is omitted from the movie.
Ned Beatty claims to have come up with the infamous "squeal piggy" line while he and actor Bill McKinney were improvising the
scene.[2] James Dickey's son, Christopher Dickey, in his
book, Summer of Deliverance, told that it was one of the crewman who suggested that Ned Beatty's character, "Bobby", "squeal like
a pig" to add some backwoods horror to the scene and make it more shocking.
Music
John Boorman's gold record for the "Dueling Banjos" hit single was later stolen from his house by the Dublin gangster
Martin Cahill, a scene Boorman recreated in The General (1998), his biographical film about Cahill.
Award nominations
Notes
External links
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