James Dickey was a mountain of a man

nixskits

The late Mr. Dickey was 6'7" from what I've read. So when he appears in the adaptation of his own book as a sheriff, it isn't like some tiny, unintimidating author playing a part for a laugh.

"Deliverance" is as deadly serious a 70s hit as anything before or since. The fear factor, before that term invoked images of silly people eating insects on primetime TV, rises like the violent waters about to break a levee once and for all. The great John Boorman directed this. And to a large extent, Dickey was an unofficial (and unwanted) assistant to Boorman. Or rather, a competitor. I can only imagine how an author reacts to anyone taking their creation from the page to the screen and all the struggles involved with that.

Apparently, Dickey would address the four main actors by their character's name. Burt Reynolds says in his autobiography that he finally told Dickey off and the big man replied, "That's exactly what Lewis would say!" And later on during the shoot, before departing, he also said, "I understand my presence would be more efficacious in it's absence!"

The four men on this trip into the horrors of confronting dangers both in Mother Nature's and deranged human assailant form find out what real fear is all about. Life in the city didn't prepare most of them for the moment when they'd have to fight for their very lives.

Ned Beatty was probably the most visible of the rape survivors in film history, at least in North America (Sophia Loren in "Two Women" would be the international candidate for that, I guess). Certainly as a man attacked by another man, he tapped into an energy most males didn't want to acknowledge. But females watching him struggle know what that distress is really all about. Domination and a perverse, insidious display of power corruption in the human soul and society at large are the key components of sexual assaults.

Until Jodie Foster starred in "The Accused", Beatty stood almost alone in representing a person violated who found the courage to go on despite the trauma the attack unleashed. How many major stars would play this part, then or now, without wanting to compromise at least a little bit in the extent of the scene? Reynolds also said that during it's filming, the action went on to the point where he couldn't take it anymore and tackled Billy McKinney off Beatty and demanded of the director, "Why the hell did you let that go on so long?" To which Boorman replied, "Because I knew when you reached your breaking point, that's when the audience would reach their's!"

score 10/10

nixskits 10 December 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2171768/