Deliverance (1972 John Boorman)

Good to see again after a period of some time. Boorman often keeps things nicely in one shot / take, whilst the rapids scenes are cut dynamically but so we can follow what's going on. Loved the moments of black humour too - the hand that doesn't want to be buried, and the corpse in the water that seems to be dancing. And the irony - we're not quite sure if the man Voight kills is the right man. Them folks round those parts ain't too friendly, that's for sure (the Chattooga River, Georgia, though it could as well be South America. I have no doubt the people of Georgia were delighted in the way they were depicted). Loved that the end of the journey and the return to 'civilization' is symbolised by derelict car wrecks; calls to mind something about the return to civilisation in Walkabout.

There's a couple of real moments near the end, where Voight joins the diners, breaks out sobbing - Beatty, the salesman, covers it with a comment. Then the latter's parting words - 'I won't be seeing you for a while'.

Locals were used in the cast and the actors are definitely doing all the canoe and stunt work. Vilmos Zsigmond memorably filmed it (in 2.20:1); Bill Butler's on second unit. The guitar music makes up most of the soundtrack. The natural sound track is good too. Boorman was nominated for best film and director, Tom Priestley for editing.

Good cast, particularly Jon Voight. With Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox, Bill McKinney, Herbert 'Cowboy' Coward. Author James Dickey plays the sheriff at the end, Charlie Boorman is the kid.

1973 was the year Vilmos was famously BAFTA nominated for this, Images and McCabe and Mrs Miller, and still lost (to Geoffrey Unsworth for Cabaret)!

Priestley was the sound editor on Repulsion, cut Morgan, Marat/Sade, Isadora, Leo the Last, Voyage of the Damned, Exorcist II, 1984, Tess. It's probably Boorman's best film.

Priestley: " I don't believe in continuity. I don't think it's important. The first rapids scene... Ronny Cox, in one take he has a hat on, and in some he doesn't. I've run it as a single scene for audience after audience and I've said 'There's a deliberate mistake in this'. And it's about one person in five hundred who spots it.' (I'm one of the 499.) He also had quite a job cutting the dueling banjos scene. The village boy can't play it and there's a banjo player's arm sticking through his and doing the fingering, which Priestley had to disguise. Not only that but he extended the musical 'duel' by repeating a section of the music because 'the climax was too short.. Nobody worried about that.' (From 'British Film Editors' by Roger Crittenden, 2004.)