Deliverance

For other uses, see Deliverance (disambiguation).

Deliverance
Movie poster by Bill Gold
Directed by	John Boorman
Produced by	John Boorman
Written by	Novel: James Dickey Screenplay: James Dickey
Starring	Jon Voight Burt Reynolds Ned Beatty Ronny Cox James Dickey
Cinematography	Vilmos Zsigmond
Editing by	Tom Priestley
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	July 30, 1972
Running time	110 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2 million
Box office	$46,122,355

Deliverance is a 1972 American thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman, and released by Warner Bros. The principal cast members are Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, with both Cox and Beatty making their feature-film debuts. 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 the Sheriff. The screenplay was written by Dickey and an uncredited Boorman.

Widely acclaimed as a landmark picture, the film is noted both for the memorable music scene near the beginning that sets the tone for what lies ahead—a trip into unknown and potentially dangerous territory—and for its notorious "squeal like a pig" male rape scene. 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".

Plot

Four Atlanta businessmen, Lewis (Burt Reynolds), Ed (Jon Voight), Bobby (Ned Beatty) and Drew (Ronny Cox), decide to canoe down a river in the remote northern Georgia wilderness, expecting to have fun and see the glory of nature before the fictional Cahulawassee River valley is flooded by the construction of a dam. Lewis, an experienced outdoorsman, is the leader. Ed is also a veteran of several trips but lacks Lewis's machismo. Bobby and Drew are novices.

The four men encounter friction with the locals, some of whom appear to be inbred. The locals are suspicious of the city men while the four middle class men act superior to the poor and uneducated locals. Bobby is particularly contemptuous of the poverty and uncouth nature of the local men. Despite this, Drew bonds with a local inbred/mongoloid boy when they engage in an impromptu rendition of "Dueling Banjos", but the boy frowns & turns away when Drew offers his hand to the youngster in a congratulatory gesture, which Drew finds strange, as the boy had been happy & smiling only moments earlier. The boy next appears on a footbridge over the river just as the men are beginning their trip. He eerily glares at the men as they start off on their journey, which Drew again finds unsettling.

When the men break for their first night on the river, Lewis leaves to investigate a strange noise in the woods but returns having found nothing. The next day the group's two canoes are separated and Bobby and Ed pull ashore to try and get their bearings. The two are accosted by a pair of shotgun wielding hillbillies, who claim that the men have accused them of running a still and making moonshine whiskey. The hillbillies tie Ed to a tree and violently rape Bobby, ordering the overweight man to "squeal like a pig". As the hillbillies prepare to orally rape Ed, Lewis and Drew arrive on the scene. Using his bow, Lewis kills the man who raped Bobby and scares off the other man.

The men argue about how to proceed. Drew insists that they must report the incident to the police but Lewis argues otherwise. He states that any police investigation & later jury for a homicide trial would likely include the man's friends and relatives, as Lewis surmises that "these people are all related". Ed agrees with Lewis, and Bobby insists that he does not want his rape to become public knowledge. The four men bury the body, reasoning that the impending flood of the valley will cover up any evidence and that the escaped man will not go to the authorities because of his participation in the rape.

The four make a run for it down the river, cutting their trip short, but soon disaster strikes as the canoes reach a dangerous stretch of rapids. Drew suddenly falls out of the lead canoe, causing Ed to lose control and smash both boats on the rocks. Lewis breaks his leg in the spill and he, Bobby and Ed make it to shore. Lewis believes that the man who escaped is stalking them and shot Drew from the bluffs above the river. That night, Ed makes his way up the bluffs with Lewis' bow and arrow. The next morning he sees a man, whom he believes to be the escaped hillbilly, holding a gun and looking down into the ravine. Ed nervously fires at the man, killing him, but in the process he slips and wounds himself with one of his own arrows. On closer inspection, Ed is no longer sure that the man he shot is the same one who escaped, noting that the escaped man had missing teeth while this one wore dentures. He returns to the river's shore with the body, but Bobby cannot positively identify the man. Ed and Bobby weigh the body down with rocks and sink it in the river. Farther down the river they discover Drew's drowned body with no visible evidence of a gunshot wound.

They finally reach their destination, the town of Aintry, which is being relocated and will soon be submerged by the waters displaced by the new dam. The local sheriff seems suspicious of the men's story that Drew drowned on the river and notes that a deputy of his is missing a relative who had gone out hunting in the area, presumably one of the men whom Ed and Lewis have killed. Nevertheless the sheriff has no actual evidence and releases the men, who vow to keep the events of the trip secret for the rest of their lives. In the final scene, Ed awakens screaming from a nightmare wherein a dead man's hand reaches up from the surface of the newly formed lake.

Cast

• Jon Voight as Ed Gentry
• Burt Reynolds as Lewis Medlock
• Ned Beatty as Bobby Trippe
• Ronny Cox as Drew Ballinger
• Billy Redden as Lonnie (banjo boy)
• Bill McKinney as Mountain Man
• Herbert 'Cowboy' Coward as Toothless Man
• James Dickey as Sheriff Bullard
• Macon McCalman as Arthur Queen

Production

Deliverance was shot in the Tallulah Gorge southeast of Clayton, Georgia and on the Chattooga River, which divides the northeastern corner of the state of Georgia from the northwestern corner of the state of South Carolina. Additional scenes were shot as well in Salem, South Carolina and Sylva, North Carolina. A scene was also shot at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church cemetery, which now lies 130 feet under the surface of Lake Jocassee, on the border between Oconee County and Pickens County South Carolina.

In addition to the movie's famous theme music, there are also 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. Other than Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel (later amended to add Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, per his lawsuit) for credit on "Dueling Banjos", there is no credit for any of the soundtrack music. Director 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.

During the filming of the canoe scene, James Dickey engaged in a bitter argument with Boorman. The result was a brief fistfight (instigated by Dickey, who was inebriated) in which Boorman had his nose broken and four of his teeth shattered. Dickey was thrown off the set yet no charges were filed. The two made up and became good friends, culminating in Dickey's role as the sheriff at the end of the film.

The canoes that were used for the white water rafting trip in the film are now on display at the Burt Reynolds Museum, located at 100 North U.S. Highway 1, in Jupiter, Florida.

One of the canoes used (and signed by Ronny Cox) is currently on display in the Tallulah Falls Railroad Museum, Dillard, Georgia.

Differences from the novel

There is no mention of the "squeal like a pig" line in the novel. Ned Beatty states that he created the famous line while he and actor Bill McKinney were improvising the scene.

James Dickey's son, Christopher Dickey, in his book, Summer of Deliverance, said that it was one of the crewmen who suggested that Ned Beatty's character, Bobby, "squeal like a pig"—to add some backwoods horror to the scene and to make it more shocking. According to Boorman's running commentary on the DVD and Blu-ray editions, the studio wanted the scene shot two ways, one of which would be acceptable for TV. Boorman did not want to do this, and as "squeal like a pig" was a good replacement for the (presumably obscene) dialog in the script, it was substituted, as it would work for both the theatrical and TV versions.

Reception

The film earned $18 million in North American rentals in 1973, making it one of the biggest hits of the year.

Critical reception

Deliverance was well received by critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1972. The film currently holds a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.

The instrumental song "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 no. 45 in a list of The 100 Greatest Films.

Awards and nominations

Nominated for:

• Academy Award for Best Picture
• Academy Award for Directing—John Boorman
• Academy Award for Film Editing—Tom Priestley
• New York Film Critics Circle for Best Film and Best Director
• Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama
• Golden Globe Award for Best Director – Motion Picture—John Boorman
• Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama—Jon Voight
• Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song—Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel
• Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay—James Dickey

American Film Institute lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies—Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills—#15
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • "I bet you can squeal like a pig."—Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)—Nominated

See also

• Survival film, about the film genre, with a list of related films

External links

• Deliverance at the Internet Movie Database
• Deliverance at Rotten Tomatoes
• Deliverance at AllRovi
• Deliverance at the TCM Movie Database
• Weekend in Aintry! James Dickey & The Making of Deliverance
• Pictures of some deleted scenes