Deliverance
Short description
Four men from Atlanta head into the north Georgia wilderness for a canoe trip down a remote river before a dam project floods the valley. Lewis, the group's outdoors-obsessed leader, brings Ed, Bobby and Drew along for what is meant to be a weekend of whitewater and untouched scenery. The isolation that drew them there turns against them once they cross paths with local men, and the trip becomes a struggle to survive a backcountry that offers no help.
John Boorman directed and produced the film, working from a screenplay by the novelist and poet James Dickey. It was Boorman's third feature, following Point Blank in 1967 and Hell in the Pacific in 1968, and it preceded Zardoz, Exorcist II: The Heretic and Excalibur. Jon Voight leads as Ed, with Burt Reynolds as Lewis, Ned Beatty as Bobby and Ronny Cox as Drew, among a credited cast of twenty-two.
Made for about two million dollars, the film returned roughly forty-six million worldwide, a strong result for its budget. Reception divides along predictable lines: critics rated it 8.6 out of 10 across 68 reviews, while audiences have settled at 7.6 out of 10 on IMDb from around 128,000 votes and 7.3 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller base of 1,882.
What's left behind the scenes
- His character looks very awkward, however, Ned Beatty was the only one of the four actor-friends who had previously gone canoeing down rivers.
- Within a year of the film's release, over 30 people drowned attempting to recreate the adventures of its heroes on the Chattahoochee River.
- The scene in which John Voight's character climbs the cliff was filmed during the day and then darkened in post-production. Filming night scenes during the day was widely practiced in cinema until the end of the 1970s due to the technical limitations of filming equipment. In particular, anamorphic lenses required a lot of light – unlike the spherical lenses that replaced them.
- Donald Sutherland read the script, found it contained too much violence, and declined the role of Ed. The actor later admitted he deeply regretted this decision.
- Local residents were genuinely cast as the inhabitants of the backwoods – again, for financial reasons.
- The river appeared so bright and saturated in the footage that the color had to be slightly muted in post-production.
- While navigating the rapids, the canoe carrying Burt Reynolds capsized, and the actor fractured his coccyx. Initially, a mannequin was used in this scene, but it looked too unnatural.
- Billy Redden didn't know how to play the banjo. During filming, he simply strummed the strings while a person who could play the instrument fretted the chords.
- The film was primarily shot on the Chattooga River, which divides South Carolina and Georgia. Some scenes were filmed on the Tallulah River in Georgia, in Salem (South Carolina) and Sylva (North Carolina), as well as in Monaca (Pennsylvania).
- For budgetary reasons, it was decided not to contact insurance companies. The actors performed all their own stunts. John Voight, in particular, actually climbed the rock face.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
