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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 Appalachia to see 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 Awards nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations, and grossed US dollar46.1 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".
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 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 vote to 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.
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 and lands on one of his own arrows. Ed worries that he has killed the wrong man when he inspects the body to find that the man has all of his teeth, but he then realizes the man is wearing dentures. Ed and Bobby weigh down the man's body in the river to ensure it will never be found, then do the same to Drew's body when they encounter it downriver shortly after.
Upon finally reaching the small town of Aintry, Ed and Bobby take Lewis to the hospital. The three carefully concoct a cover story for local authorities about Drew's death, lying about their adventure to Sheriff Bullard in order to escape a possible double 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 Lewis is being watched over by a police officer. A worried Ed whispers to Lewis that they need to change their cover story, but Lewis relaxes him by pretending that he has no memory of what happened after they fell off the canoes due to head trauma. 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 ago 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 vow 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 that torments Ed.
Beatty's wife Belinda and Boorman's son Charley Boorman briefly appear as the wife and son of Voight's character in the final scene.
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.
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".
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.Boyd, Joe, White Bicycles – Making Music in the 1960s, Serpent's Tail, 2006. Page 238. ISBN 1-85242-910-0
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.
| +Chart performance for Deliverance soundtrack !Chart (1973) !Position |
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." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "an engrossing adventure, a demonstrable labor of love" carried by Voight and Reynolds.Champlin, Charles (August 13, 1972). "Men Against River—of Life?—in 'Deliverance'". Los Angeles Times. Calendar, p. 17. 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."Arnold, Gary (October 5, 1972). "' Deliverance': A Gripping Piece of Work". The Washington Post. B1.
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." "Deliverance". Chicago Sun-Times.
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."Murphy, Arthur D. (July 19, 1972). " Film Reviews: Deliverance". Variety. 14. 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."Canby, Vincent (July 31, 1972). " The Screen: James Dickey's 'Deliverance' Arrives". The New York Times. 21.
"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". However, he stated that the rape scene went "too far".
| Academy Awards | Best Picture | John Boorman | ||
| Best Director | ||||
| Best Film Editing | Tom Priestley | |||
| British Academy Film Awards | Best Cinematography | Vilmos Zsigmond | ||
| Best Film Editing | Tom Priestley | |||
| Best Soundtrack | Jim Atkinson, Walter Goss, and Doug Turner | |||
| Directors Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures | John Boorman | ||
| Golden Globe Awards | Best Motion Picture – Drama | |||
| Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama | Jon Voight | |||
| Best Director – Motion Picture | John Boorman | |||
| Best Screenplay – Motion Picture | James Dickey | |||
| Best Original Song – Motion Picture | "Dueling Banjos" Music by Arthur Smith; Adaptation by Eric Weissberg | |||
| National Board of Review Awards | ||||
| National Film Preservation Board | National Film Registry | |||
| Turkish Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | |||
| Writers Guild of America Awards | Best Drama – Adapted from Another Medium | James Dickey | ||
Filmmaker Bong Joon Ho has cited Deliverance as one of his top four favorite films.
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