Scarecrow

In Scarecrow, the 1973 comedy-drama directed by Jerry Schatzberg that tied for the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the Cannes Film Festival, audiences are witness to a masterclass in acting from its two stars: Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, just as both were beginning to skyrocket. Hackman had just won the Oscar for The French Connection, and Pacino was in between the first two Godfather films. Those other films are more renowned today, but their performances here might be their most underappreciated work. 

There is a lot of physical work here right from the get-go by Hackman and Pacino, especially as the latter does some jumping jacks and acts like a monkey; the former at one point puts on a strip show in a bar to the applause of the others. It's all practically vaudevillian. Fitting neatly into the New Hollywood era of films like Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, and Five Easy Pieces, Hackman plays a man of ambition but bad impulses named Max; Pacino plays a wanderer named Francis (who's nicknamed "Lion"). They meet on the road waiting to hitchhike, and, despite some resistance from Max, decide to team up on Max's odyssey to Pittsburgh, where he hopes to open his own car wash. Why it has to be all the way in Pittsburgh, he won't say. 

Max does not need a narrator to describe him—he sums himself up succinctly yet accurately. According to him, he's the meanest son of a bitch alive—he doesn't trust anybody, and he doesn't love anybody. He's also a bit of a bully, "very practical but dumb." One of the few outsider observations that could be made about him is that he makes one bad decision after another and never stops to realize when he's gone too far, all the while refusing to admit the problems he finds himself in are often self-inflicted. In short, he blames everyone but himself, and he is vulnerable but overly masculine; much of this comes across in subtle looks Hackman gives. 

Lion is the polar opposite, but opposites often attract, don't they? He's boyish in the best ways but irresponsible in the worst. A former sailor, he requests a stop in Detroit so he can see his wife and child, whom he has abandoned. He hopes to present his son a lamp as a gift, which is an odd gift for a young child. These details are important—the state of Lion's hat, for example, says an awful lot about him and his socioeconomic status. It's not like the costume choices do the heavy lifting, but they augment what the two actors are trying to say about these two struggling men they're portraying. 

What is Scarecrow really about? One could argue that it spares the didacticism of counter-culture road films in favor of a simple story of male friendship. Max is aggressive, while Francis is sensitive. This dichotomy drives much of the emotional reaction of the film. There's no competition from each other; by the end of the film, it is more than obvious that they really need each other. 

The great acting, however, compensates for the film's flaws, namely how it kind of rambles, especially in the second half, before it ends with a gut punch. While one might interpret the film's meandering structure as reflecting the rootlessness of its protagonists, it ultimately feels more like a flaw than a feature, undermining the impact of these two performances. I wondered whether the two nicknames in the film (Scarecrow and Lion) had anything to do with The Wizard of Oz, yet I could not come up with any solid conclusion about such symbolism. 

On a sadder, final note, it must be said that Scarecrow serves as a potent reminder of the exceptional talent of Gene Hackman. His death in February at the age of 95 was a tragic loss for cinema.