Deliverance

"I think of our mutual friend Boorman, and dream that one day a fairy’s hand will deliver the screenplay of Deliverance to me. But of course that never happens!"

— Jean-François Stévenin

Four friends from Atlanta head into the Georgia wilderness to canoe a river set to be flooded for a hydroelectric dam. What begins as an adventure soon turns nightmarish, when a violent encounter in the woods leaves the men facing decisions for which none of them is prepared. As the river becomes more and more treacherous, the group’s courage, endurance and morals are tested to the limit.

John Boorman’s thriller of homosociality removed from its normal social context was a crucial influence on Passe Montagne, Stévenin’s first film, which can be seen in part as a variation on Deliverance’s premise. The film also gave Stévenin the confidence to shoot with non-professionals in his native Jura: la France profonde to Boorman’s Deep South. Boorman was in turn an enthusiastic fan of Passe Montagne, writing in a letter to its director that "the images burn, they stay in the mind as lines of a poem" — a description equally apt for his own film.

Deliverance, dir. John Boorman, USA 1972, 109 min.