DELIVERANCE: Deluxe Edition

Directed by: John Boorman

Written by: James Dickey (novel & screenplay)

Cast: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox

Music by: Klaus Badelt

Cinematography by: Vilmos Zsigmund

Editing by: Tom Priestley

Distributed by: Warner Brothers

Four cocky urban thrill seekers go on a canoeing trip in the Georgia wilderness, to ride the rapids of a river which is soon to be destroyed forever by damming works. They encounter some of the strange indigenous population at a village where they stop to refuel and Drew (Ronny Cox) plays his guitar against a local boy on his banjo. All is well on their trip until a chance encounter between Bobby (Ned Beatty) and Ed (Jon Voight) with a pair of male hillbillies results in rape and death. Lewis (Burt Reynolds) organises the others into action and their vacation becomes a desperate fight for survival against nature and a perceived threat from more locals.

John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE is a reasonably clever thriller from 1972 that pulls no punches in its graphic depiction of violence that was quite ahead of its time. It’s more than a mere shocker, though, and the film is deliberately vague and ambiguous. The urban vacationers are arrogant and ignorant, and one even talks casually of raping the landscape right at the start. It certainly has many aspects that are open to interpretation, which has made the film a firm favourite and a genuine classic.

The film was shot entirely on location in Georgia and the scenery is both striking and alien – the village is strangely littered with the shells of old cars, which makes it look particularly squalid and run-down. The mountain men look suitably inbred, including the memorable boy-on-a-banjo Lonnie (Billy Reddon). He appears again later in the film standing on a bridge. When Drew calls out to him and makes a strumming gesture on his paddle, the boy just stares him down as he floats under the bridge in a scene that seems to foretell the horrors to come in a particularly disquietening way.

One of the most surprising aspects of the film is the obvious fact that the vast majority of stunts are performed by the actors themselves. It’s more surprising to discover than prior to shooting it, the only member of the cast to have canoeing experience was Ned Beatty, who is portrayed as the most “citified” of the four. Burt Reynolds seems incredibly young in Deliverance, long before his moustache and cranial augmentation and his appearance in late 70’s and 80’s screwball comedies. John Voight’s character is complacent and easygoing. He struggles to kill a deer, but is severely tested later and is forced to climb a cliff (again, another stunt performed for real by the actor) and confront the threat head-on. Ronny Cox’s Drew is the only dissenting voice amongst the four when difficult decisions need to be made. It is perhaps worth mentioning that the Vietnam War was still raging at this time, and it seems that this film can be interpreted as allegorical to that conflict. Drew is perhaps the conscience of the group in this respect.

The dialogue is occasionally a little clunky (when a local asks Lewis why he wants to mess with the river, he replies with too much severity: “because it’s there”) and sometimes delivered a little too self-consciously. That said, there are some great lines in here (my particular favourite delivered deadpan by a hillbilly cop: “we might have to stop just a minute for the church to get out the way”) and Ned Beatty is great in his debut film role. One definite disappointment is the fact that the scene with Ed climbing the cliff is shot “day for night” which is a real distraction as it is in no way convincing and is the only negative thing to be said about the cinematography.

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