Throughout the entire film, the thing that I struggled with the most was the camera work. The scene in particular that was an issue to me was early in the film as Burt Reynolds’ Lewis and Jon Voight’s Ed sped down the dirt road towards the Cahulawassee River. The camera was mounted on the hood of the pickup truck that Lewis drove. While this wouldn’t typically be an issue (and would most likely be a great option for camera location) the camera sat so close to the windshield that the audience was barely able to see Ed and Lewis’ entire heads. As they barrelled down the road, Ed made it a point to tell Lewis to slow the truck down; however, having the camera so close to the faces of the driver and the passenger made it nearly impossible to see just how fast they were going. I imagine that the reason for the location of the camera would have been because it would have been difficult, based on the location, for Burt Reynolds (or more likely, the stunt driver) to drive as fast as they would have been insinuating. Issues like this ensued for the remainder of the film; the camera was often too close to determine what was going on around the character. I felt that, similar to the scene with Lewis driving recklessly down the road, due to the low budget of the film (around two million dollars) the film crew did what they needed to in order to make the scenes seem as realistic as possible and avoid capturing the certain parts of the set in the frame. The rape scene between Ned Beatty’s Bobby and Bill McKinney’s Mountain Man was one of the most uncomfortable scenes that I’ve seen in a film. It takes a lot to disturb me, but this scene crossed the line. With that being said, I thought it was a phenomenally filmed scene. This was one of the scenes in which the camera work was very nicely done. The scene is obviously meant to be disturbing and with the effective use of the camera and the simple, raw acting of both Beatty and McKinney, the scene was just that as well as disgustingly believable. I felt that this particular scene was possibly the best acted scene in the entire film. To speak further on the acting, there were times in which I struggled to believe certain actors. Reynolds and Voight are two of Hollywood’s most renowned actors (even with the death of Reynolds in September). Due to this fact, their acting was a bit disappointing at times; I didn’t always believe that they were in the situations being depicted in the film. It’s important to note that because I have not seen many older films with Reynolds or Voight, these two actors were nearly unrecognizable. While the film actually moved quite slow, I thought it was intriguing and it kept my attention throughout. James Dickey did an outstanding job of writing this film (I’m assuming that due to the fact that he had written the novel, as well, just two years prior, that this film was an accurate depiction of the story told in that novel). I knew very little about this film prior to watching it, but the reason that I was so intrigued by what was going on was that from the very start of the film, the tone presented by director John Boorman was eerie and led me to believe that, at any moment, something important and strange was going to happen. One of the things that helped support this idea was the constant use of the song “Dueling Banjos.” The song is not even creepy, but the fact that the precedent for this song was set so early on with the introduction of the song being from not only Ronny Cox’s Drew, but the incredibly creepy Lonnie (Billy Redden) caused the song to be regarded as such. The constant use of the song prior to some of the more messed up events in the film deepened the connection between the suspense and the song. Even though the camera work and the acting were spotty, I felt that the writing and directing in this film was done so well that it made up for its shortcomings. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068473/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
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