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| Director Jerry Schatzberg |
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| Gene Hackman |
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| Schatzberg on the set with Al Pacino and Gene Hackman |
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| Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács |
SCARECROW A- USA (112 mi) 1973 ‘Scope
Jerry Schatzberg is a filmmaker you’ve likely never heard of, making films like Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), a strange and quirky film starring Faye Dunaway as an haute couture fashion model that descends into the depths of madness, yet he was there in the 70’s when American movies may have never been more daring, an era fondly remembered as a golden age for American cinema. Schatzberg’s greatest unseen film remains SCARECROW (1973), a brilliant character-driven piece about two underdogs in search of a better life that evolves into a road movie with Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, a couple of unlikely outsiders that end up hitchhiking on the road and riding the rails together, developing an unusual rapport that touched a nerve with the American counterculture at the time, though there’s nothing counterculture about either one of these characters, yet the dizzyingly offbeat direction the film takes most certainly is, like the complex yet thoroughly unconventional character study shown in Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970). Over the course of the 1960’s and into the 1970’s, Hollywood fell in love with oddballs, eccentrics, outcasts, misfits, and people who just couldn’t—or wouldn’t—fit into mainstream American society. Made on a miniscule budget of $800,000, the film defies easy categorization, as it simply goes places most films don’t dare to go in an eccentric tale of friendship, heartbreak, and trauma, with superb cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond whose expressive widescreen panoramas capture the sheer enormity of the country, featuring overpowering performances that are among the best in their respective careers, winner of the top prize at Cannes when the Grand Prix Award temporarily replaced the Palme d’Or from 1964 – 74. While it was recognized at Cannes, it was promptly ignored at the American box office and by the Academy of Arts and Sciences, garnering no Oscar nominations (the studio instead pushed William Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST), though Gene Hackman has stated that this often overlooked performance is his personal favorite, with both Hackman and Pacino claiming this is one of their favorite films, each providing a wonderful naturalism in a freewheeling adventure filled with sweeping vistas, endless roads, dilapidated cars, and ordinary people, along with frequent long takes, a verité style allowing plenty of room for improvisation, giving this a Cassavetes-inspired indie edginess. For Hackman, he typically goes in and out of character with each individual shot, but Pacino stays in character on the set for the entire duration of the shoot, which apparently drove some people nuts. Schatzberg has indicated that Pacino disliked the final cut of the film and didn’t speak to him for years afterwards, while Hackman vowed to take on more commercial projects moving forward. The road movie may have been the defining genre of the 1970’s, perhaps best exemplified by Dennis Hopper’s counterculture fantasy gone wrong, Easy Rider (1969), or the bare-bones expression of an achingly lonely life on the road revealed in Monte Hellman’s critically dismissed Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). Shot on location, capturing a memorable series of back roads, train yards, and forgotten towns, yet despite the mythical promise of the “open road,” romanticized visions of the American West often give rise to a directionless isolation, as loneliness pervades the narrow, deserted highway in the film’s poetic opening, an improbable meeting place for Gene Hackman and Al Pacino’s drifters, Scarecrow, by Jerry Schatzberg (1973) - Opening scene (with ... YouTube (7:45), recalling how the desert seemed to swallow up a broken-down Harry Dean Stanton in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984). Before shooting, both Hackman and Pacino dressed as hobos and hitchhiked through California to get into their characters. In the same year, released just a month apart, Vilmos Zsigmond also shot Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), which dominated all the headlines, having previously filmed Altman’s lusciously photographed McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Peter Fonda’s highly visual acid western The Hired Hand (1971), while this film was not just overlooked but thoroughly dismissed. Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács, who met as film students in Hungary, were known for their unique visual styles, becoming legendary cinematographers who helped shape the look of American movies in the 1970’s, literally turning cinematography into an art form.
Amidst the heightened optimism of the 60’s, with the promise of racial equality, women’s rights, and social transformation, there are few films that epitomize the end of that failed dream more than Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), which is essentially the end of hope from Paris 1968, but that film’s got nothing on this one, which is as dramatically heartbreaking and downbeat as anything from the times, plunging us into a world of emotional bleakness and unending despair, the likes of which we rarely see realized with such an uncompromising vision. This is a hard film to forget, filled with gut-wrenching performances, taking us into unexpected territory that few films are willing to explore, none featuring such big name actors (it was originally intended to star Bill Cosby and Jack Lemmon), yet it’s a blistering experience that will leave you feeling aching and bruised, where you’re just not the same afterwards, having your world upended, but the depth of the experience is unmistakable. It’s fair to say that it’s been a while, if ever, that you’ve seen a film like this, as it’s authentic, entirely original, and emotionally devastating. Made just prior to Sidney Lumet’s more popular SERPICO (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975), a year after Pacino appeared in Francis Ford Coppola’s THE GODFATHER (1972), having worked with Schatzberg earlier in THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK (1971), and a year before Hackman appeared in Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) or Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975), having already won an Academy Award for William Friedkin’s THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971), this couldn’t be a more drastic detour away from that more flamboyant style of Hollywood filmmaking, plunging us into a myriad of conflicting emotions. Not exactly a buddy movie, yet it is an enduring friendship, where Hackman and Pacino are onscreen together playing off each other for nearly the entire duration of the film, creating extraordinary moments, like the best moments you’d see onstage, recalling Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, making this a uniquely riveting experience. Written by first-time screenwriter Garry Michael White, a graduate of the Goodman Theater School of Drama in Chicago, it opens on an empty road in the middle of nowhere as we’re first introduced to Max (Gene Hackman, who died in February 2025, where this film pays a tribute to him) as he makes his way down a rolling California hill before fumbling through a barbed-wire fence, then dusting himself off as he finds the road, but he’s being watched by another man from behind a tree, Francis (Al Pacino), who greets him in a friendly manner, but he’s completely ignored by Max, who walks right past him, both eager to hitch a ride. As tumbleweeds blow past them, they are dwarfed by the immensity of the landscape and the silence that envelops them. Both competing for that rare car driving past, they end up waiting for most of the day, where the ice is finally broken when Francis offers him his last match to light a cigar stub perpetually dangling out of Max’s mouth. The somewhat clownish Francis, an eternal optimist, dressed in a peacoat, has been at sea for five years, absurdly seen carrying a boxed unisex lamp in his arms at all times, like a security blanket, a gift for the child he has never seen, wrapped in a red bow, completely unaware if it’s a boy or girl, yet he has regularly been sending money to the mother in Detroit, where he hopes to make amends. Short-tempered Max, on the other hand, a blustery figure combatively filled with an indescribable inner rage, has just spent six years in San Quintin for assault, whose presence is defined by wearing multiple layers of clothing, where his bedtime ritual is absurdly taking off each shirt, one at a time, now tasting his first days of freedom, carrying a small notebook in his hands which has the details of all of his plans, where he believes opening a car wash in Pittsburgh is the answer to all his prayers, and with the help of Francis, they can go into business together. At one point they hitch a ride with a hippie couple in a Volkswagen, yet the sound of screaming babies hilariously sends them right back out the door again.
An improbable friendship is formed, bonded by the allure of the American Dream, however elusive it may feel, but when Max makes a plan, he sticks to it, as if it’s his way of assuring himself there’s order in his life, while the more carefree Francis appears to be the more flexible of the two, easily drifting into the role of comic relief, which is how he diffuses volatile situations, while Max prefers to fight any and all obstacles standing before him. It’s an interesting dynamic, forged by a common goal, but their immense personalities are front and center, Francis the accommodator, and Max the fighter, and it follows them wherever they go, Scarecrow (1973) -- (Movie Clip) The Crows Are Laughing ... YouTube (3:57). Owing a debt to John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, with the gruff wiser guy protecting the simpler, innocent one, both men locked into their respective personas as we follow them through a series of back roads, roadside bars, and diners, creating a moving portrait of a striking American landscape. One of the most perfect illustrations of American cinema’s fearless ambitions in the 1970’s, it owes a debt to John Schlesinger’s MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969), particularly the unrelentingly bleak look at the seedy underbelly of American life which is undeniably disturbing, but the weighty performances of Hackman, a consummate everyman, and the more naïve Pacino, like Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight before them, make it difficult to turn away. Perhaps the film is less about two men chasing their dreams than it is about the difficulties of returning to a life they abandoned a long time ago, offering a requiem for broken dreams. Riding the rails, they head east to Denver to visit Max’s sister Coley (Dorothy Tristan) in her “flower” house, a remnant of the 60’s counterculture, whose roommate Frenchy (Ann Wedgeworth) is easy on the eyes, not the brightest bulb on the block, but her emotional accessibility and sexual allure sends signals to Max, who has been locked up far too long, providing a needed outlet and emotional release. A celebratory dinner provides one of the best scenes of the film, especially the way the song lyrics completely capture the essence of female vulnerability in a male-dominated landscape, featuring Aretha Franklin’s uncredited [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman [2021 Remaster] YouTube (2:44), a jukebox song heard in a crowded bar, with both men dancing with the women when a ruckus breaks out, creating pandemonium, which is a common occurrence in this film, where tenuous moments can turn supercharged in no time at all, creating a roller coaster of shifting emotions which pretty much defines this film, where every scene seems to tap into raw emotion. This sequence only turns more hysterical, quickly growing out of control, but eventually the police are called and the two men are hauled off to jail for a month. Max blames Francis and refuses to speak to him in the joint, harboring a grudge, sending him into the open arms of Riley (Richard Lynch), a trustee prisoner who wedges his way between the two men, taking Francis under his wing, recommending easy work assignments, while sticking Max on the least desirable work detail, shoveling pig slop. This is a perfect example of a dream gone bad, with Riley feigning friendship while manipulating Francis into having sex with him, and when he refuses, he beats the living tar out of him, leaving him a bloody mess afterwards. Max quickly turns the tables on him and exacts his revenge, where the fight scene is shot from a crane shot high above, where they look like tiny insignificant creatures, a framing device that was originally used to shoot a prolonged outdoor fistfight sequence between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston in William Wyler’s sprawling western THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), where they are just tiny specks on the ground engulfed by an immense landscape.
Schatzberg was a trained photographer before he became a filmmaker, where his photographs were centered on 60’s pop culture, capturing off-moments of relaxed details, featuring the Beatles in red Christmas garb, the Rolling Stones in drag, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (he was close friends with Tate five years before she married Polanski, and did a series of photographs of her in a bathtub), Catherine Deneuve, and Bob Dylan (that’s his slightly blurry yet iconic photograph on the cover of Blonde On Blonde in 1966). His pictures of Bob Dylan, Edie Sedgwick, and Anne St. Marie are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and exhibited in museums around the world. He was a latecomer to the movies, making his first feature at the age of 43, yet he had a way of putting actors and models at ease, capturing them in moments of vulnerability and tenderness, which this film excels at. While the road film exemplifies the “outsider” sensibility that typified the period, Francis is clearly not the same after Denver, as the prison beating has robbed him of his innocence, rarely smiling anymore, where that carefree manner is gone, instead absorbed in his own thoughts, with Max making a concerted effort to loosen him up and make him laugh, as he’s taking himself much too seriously now. Having undergone personal transformations, their positions have shifted now, with Max viewing himself as his protector. Fresh from the work farm, Max and Francis are drinking the day away in a bar when Max gets into a row with another patron and is about to resume his old impulsive habits, with Francis sadly making his way to the exit, wanting no part in it, which stops Max in his tracks, suddenly shifting his style, becoming more accommodating, where he does a little impromptu striptease with all those layers of clothing, an unforgettable, rough-and-tumble bar sequence that has the customers in stitches, becoming a joyously communal event that leaves Francis even further alienated, trying to get a smile on that stone face, as this performance is all for his benefit, showing restraint, possibly for the very first time in his life, Gene Hackman's Dance, in Jerry Schatzberg's Scarecrow, 1973 YouTube (2:42). But this is like a profound foreshadowing of what’s to come, though what truly stands out is the dignity and humanity of both characters, which transcends time, place, and circumstance. What drew Max to Francis is his generosity of spirit, a quality he greatly admires, but something is sapping that spirit. By the time they get to Detroit, standing right across the street from the home Francis has been pursuing all along, he hasn’t the nerve to knock on the door, making his way instead to a phone booth on the street, with Max giving him a pep talk, reminding him what he needs to say. But Annie (Penelope Allen) is still furious that he abandoned her when she was pregnant, leading her to deceive him with a stream of lies, creating a trauma-laden scenario that would not only crush his dreams but break his heart, permanently, leaving him utterly broken, hanging up mid-sentence in what has to be the most emotionally devastating phone call in American cinema. And while he pretends that everything went well, clearly it did not, beautifully expressed in a fountain scene in Belle Isle Park, where they’re playfully interacting with other little kids as their mothers look on, until something goes terribly wrong, as Francis won’t let go of one of the kids that he carries out into the water, desperately clinging to him, as if it’s his own, experiencing a psychological breakdown that is simply unlike anything else we’ve seen in the movies. It is far and away more authentic, without a trace of sentimentality, scorchingly real, becoming a bombshell moment of utter horror, leaving viewers stunned by the dramatic power of the moment, completely altering the dynamic of the film, turning into something of a psychological nightmare, with shades of Jack Nicholson in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975). With the wheels literally stripped from their dream, where what happens is fast, destructive, and random, which is how tragedy normally strikes, accompanied by a complete absence of a safety net, there is just a staggering emptiness, reflective of the times, leaving behind an inconsolable loss that is endlessly devastating. A product of the New Hollywood movement, as it embodies the genre’s hallmarks of a road movie structure, protagonists lingering on society’s fringes, a subtle anti-establishment ethos, and a visual palette steeped in shadowy realism, anchored by career-defining performances from Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, as the film marries bleak existentialism with moments of fragile hope, only to culminate in a denouement so harrowing it etches itself into the viewer’s memory, where it’s hard to imagine a more deafening silence.
