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Deliverance

Deliverance is a 1972 Hollywood film by British director John Boorman. Southern author James Dickey adapted his own best-selling 1970 novel into the screenplay. To convey a gritty realism, Deliverance was shot on location in Georgia's Appalachia and was filmed in sequence using color desaturation. The film stems from the 1970s period of the “New Hollywood” cinema, during which filmmakers challenged the classical techniques of studio moviemaking. Its depiction of the south remains one of the most important in film history.

The Plot

The action/adventure plotline of Deliverance pits civilized man against an endangered, but savage, nature. The film begins by introducing four male friends from Atlanta. At a backwoods gas station, the men inquire about hiring some locals to drive their vehicles to Aintry at the end of the Cahulawassee River, which the friends plan to navigate during a weekend canoeing retreat. The film's main protagonists are Lewis (Burt Reynolds), a muscle-bound survivalist who suggests the trip and seeks deliverance from the city to get back in touch with his primal side, and the cerebral Ed (Jon Voight), who is attracted to Lewis's frontier spirit despite his own comfortable suburban lifestyle. Bobby (Ned Beatty), an overweight jokester, and Drew (Ronnie Cox), a cultured man who plays the guitar, round out the quartet. As a frame for the principal narrative, Boorman includes several shots of the damming of the Cahulawassee, which is being done to provide electrical power to Atlanta. Lewis condemns this modernization of Appalachia as a “rape” of nature.

At first, the men experience tension with the locals, who suspect the strangers of being in cahoots with the electrical company. In turn, the urban dwellers display condescension toward the poor farming community, particularly Bobby, who makes fun of one person and scoffs at the “genetic deficiencies” of another. In an episode that sets the tone for urban versus rural, Drew plays a bluegrass tune with a mentally disabled boy sitting on a porch strumming a banjo. Created as a shot/reverse-shot sequence that alternates between the players trying to outdo each other, this “dueling banjos” competition—which the boy wins—is one of the film's most iconic scenes.

Culture Clash

The action in Deliverance extends over four days. On day one, the friends navigate a series of rapids and encounter an immense and unspoiled wilderness that makes them feel like the early explorers of America. On day two, however, they experience the more malevolent side of nature. As Ed and Bobby paddle on ahead, they come upon two mountain men whose inbred appearance conforms to southern “redneck” stereotypes. The encounter quickly turns violent. At gunpoint, the locals tie Ed to a tree and force Bobby to remove his clothing. In the most infamous scene of the film, one of the men savagely sodomizes Bobby while beating him and forcing him to “squeal like a pig.” Through a combination of rapid editing cuts, close-ups, and the sound of faux hog squeals, Boorman depicts the mountain man raping Bobby as if to punish him for his earlier indiscretions and for his complicity in the city's own “rape” of nature.

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