DELIVERANCE
1972,
Warner Bros.,
109 min,
USA,
Dir: John Boorman
Director John Boorman fashions an indescribable odyssey of unexpected violence, endurance and transcendence as Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty are stalked by a scruffy gang of backwoods Neanderthals. The cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond (MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, THE LONG GOODBYE, and winner of the 1998 ASC Lifetime Achievement Award) perfectly evokes an atmosphere of stark, pastoral beauty and mounting terror from novelist James Dickey’s pitch-perfect screenplay.