By Mike Wilmington Wilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on DVDs: Deliverance
CO-PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSIC
DELIVERANCE (40th Anniversary collector’s edition) Four Stars
U.S.; John Boorman, 1972 (Warner Bros.)
Four Southern businessmen, searching for the joys of youth, join together for a Georgia canoe trip on the beautiful but often dangerously turbulent Cahulawassee River. Soon however, after a violent confrontation with two evil backwoodsmen, they find themselves heading into a Conradian Heart of Darkness.
Jon Voight (as the man of thought), Burt Reynolds (as the man of action), Ned Beatty (as the fat jovial victim, the man of expediency) and Ronny Cox (as the man of conscience) are the white rapids-daring quartet, and they’re all aces. (Reynolds has never been better). Bill McKinney and Herbert “Cowboy” Coward play their antagonists, the brutal hillbillies of your worst nightmares – and Vilmos Zsigmond’s spectacular cinematography of the wild river runs and the deep dark forests has a hypnotic splendor, drenching the screen in lyricism and thrills.
Splendid also is Deliverance’s famous spine-tingling instrumental scene “Duellin’ Banjos,” an idyllic early interlude with river-traveller Ronny Cox bursting into a furious banjo duet with a mentally challenged river boy, a number — according to the Deliverance booklet — originally written (as “Feudin’ Banjos”) by the legendary picker Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith. It’s played for the movie by two New York City session musicians Eric Weissberg and Steven Mandell, mimed on screen by Billy Redden (as the “Banjo Boy”), with Mike Addis miming the playing. It’s one moment of almost celestial lightness and gace, in a movie that often soaks you in pure fear, fills you with horror.
In fact, John Boorman’s 1972 film, from poet James Dickey’s celebrated novel (southern poet Dickey wrote the screenplay and appears in a cameo as a burly sheriff), is one of the great dark American adventure movies. It’s also the model of a ‘70s American film classic, typical product of a movie decade that took artistic chances as well as financial ones. Every scene has a terrific mix of spontaneity and elegiac beauty, and the result is a wrenching, unforgettable film experience: a Faulknerian, even Melvillean, plunge into the perils of nature, the terrors of the chase, the contradictions of humanity, and the dark wilderness of the soul.
Extras: Commentary by Boorman; Featurettes (including the vintage The Dangerous World of Deliverance and the newly made documentary Deliverance: The Cast Remembers); Booklet; Trailer.