Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: Deliverance

Screened: September 1, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Brothers (2004)
Selected By: Grant

Burt Reynolds began his acting career on the stage and in television, but in the 1960s he transitioned to film, where he would eventually establish his role as a leading man sex symbol and Hollywood institution. Reynolds’ early renown as a reliable and popular performer, often in Spaghetti Westerns, gradually grew until he was offered his breakout starring role in John Boorman’s landmark 1972 drama, Deliverance. The film was also a pivotal success for its three other principals: John Voight, following his acclaimed debut in 1969’s Midnight Cowboy; relatively unknown actor and guitarist Ronny Cox; and newcomer Ned Beatty in his own acting debut.

Based on the lauded 1970 work by American poet and novelist James Dickey, whose popularity exploded following the film, Deliverance is arguably the most revered work from Boorman. The English director began his career as a documentary filmmaker for the BBC, before breaking out in 1967 with the brutal Lee Marvin crime drama Point Blank, now regarded as a neo-noir classic. Boorman’s modest success with feature films eventually paved the way for Deliverance, his first box-office triumph and most enduring feature, alongside his 1981 fantasy epic, Excalibur. Despite his British background, the director brought an unexpected sensitivity to the film’s disturbing, notorious depiction of American folly and endurance.

Dickey’s novel and the film address these themes with a relatively simple story: four Atlanta businessmen set off into the Georgian wilderness for a weekend canoe adventure that becomes a terrifying nightmare. The film’s renowned, eerie banjo sequence and the actors’ grueling stunt work provide a visceral edge to its commentary. Unremittingly dark in tone, the film features a now archetypal depiction of Appalachian hillbillies as monstrous, violent deviants. The protagonists, however, are also shown to be ultimately foolish, arrogant, and morally bankrupt. The film is ambiguous as to whether the brutality of the wilderness and their ordeal bestows the four suburbanites with these qualities, or merely brings them to the surface. In crafting this harrowing depiction of middle class hubris and the fragility of decency, Boorman and the performers created what might be regarded as one of the great American horror films of the late twentieth century.