''Scarecrow'' is a 1973 American

road movie A road movie is a film genre in which the main characters leave home on a road trip, typically altering the perspective from their everyday lives. Road movies often depict travel in the hinterlands, with the films exploring the theme of alienatio ...

directed by

Jerry Schatzberg Jerry Schatzberg (born June 26, 1927) is an American photographer and film director. Career Schatzberg was born to a Jewish family of furriers and grew up in the Bronx. He photographed for magazines such as ''Vogue'', '' Esquire'' and '' McCalls ...

and starring Gene Hackman and Al Pacino. The story involves the relationship between two men who travel from California seeking to start a business in Pittsburgh. At the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, the film tied for the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film, the highest honor. While it fared poorly commercially, ''Scarecrow'' later gained

cult status A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...

Plot

Two vagabonds, Max Millan, a short-tempered ex-convict, and Francis Lionel "Lion" Delbuchi, a childlike former sailor, meet on the road in California and agree to become partners in a car-wash business once they reach Pittsburgh. Lion is traveling to Detroit to see a child whom he has never met and make amends with his wife Annie, to whom he has sent all of the money that he had earned while at sea. Max agrees to take a detour on his way to Pittsburgh, where the bank to which Max has been sending all his seed money is located. While visiting Max's sister in Denver, the pair's antics land them in a prison farm for a month. Max blames Lion for their incarceration and shuns him. Lion is befriended by a powerful inmate named Riley, who later tries to sexually assault Lion and physically savages and emotionally traumatizes him. Max rekindles his friendship with Lion and becomes his protector, eventually exacting revenge by fighting Riley. After their release, Max and Lion continue to have a profound effect on each other, although they have both undergone personal transformations and their roles have shifted. Lion is still traumatized and no longer carefree or able to smile, and Max loosens his high-strung aggression, performing a mock striptease to defuse a fight at a bar and make Lion laugh again. When Max and Lion finally arrive in Detroit, Lion finds a payphone and calls Annie, now remarried and raising their five-year-old son. Annie is still furious with Lion for having abandoned her, and lies that she miscarried their son. Lion is devastated but feigns joy with Max about having a son. Shortly afterward, Lion experiences a breakdown while playing with children in a city park and later becomes catatonic. Max promises Lion, now in a psychiatric hospital, that he will do anything to help him, and boards a train to Pittsburgh with a round-trip ticket.

Cast

Production

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

approved the project, looking for a small-budget film after executives became less confident in the success of larger projects. Director Jerry Schatzberg's preference for the roles of Max and Lion were Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, as Schatzberg had worked with Pacino on ''

The Panic in Needle Park ''The Panic in Needle Park'' is a 1971 American drama film directed by Jerry Schatzberg and starring Al Pacino (in his first lead role) and Kitty Winn. The screenplay was written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, adapted from the 1966 nove ...

'' (1971). To understand their characters, Pacino and Hackman donned costumes and posed as beggars in San Francisco. However, Pacino, an advocate of

method acting Method acting, informally known as The Method, is a range of training and rehearsal techniques, as formulated by a number of different theatre practitioners, that seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, u ...

, found his techniques conflicted with those of Hackman, who would be silent before shooting while Pacino paced. Although Hackman enjoyed the production, Pacino later commented, "It wasn't the easiest working with Hackman, who I love as an actor."

Reception

At the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the interim equivalent of the

Palme d'Or The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...

, the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film, shared with ''

The Hireling ''The Hireling'' is a 1973 British drama film directed by Alan Bridges, based on a 1957 novel of the same title by L. P. Hartley, which starred Robert Shaw and Sarah Miles. It tells the story of a chauffeur who falls in love with an aristocra ...

,'' directed by

Alan Bridges Alan Bridges (28 September 1927 – 7 December 2013) was an English film and television director. In 1967 Bridges directed a television adaptation of Charles Dickens' '' Great Expectations'' starring Gary Bond as Pip. He won the '' Grand P ...

. It also won Best Non-European Film at Denmark's 1974

Bodil Awards The Bodil Awards are the major Danish film awards given by the Danish Film Critics Association. The awards are presented annually at a ceremony in Copenhagen. Established in 1948, it is one of the oldest film awards in Europe. The awards are give ...

. In the U.S., ''Scarecrow'' proved to be a

box-office bomb A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...

. Roger Ebert awarded the film three stars, comparing the story to those of ''

Of Mice and Men ''Of Mice and Men'' is a novella written by John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job o ...

'' and ''

Midnight Cowboy ''Midnight Cowboy'' is a 1969 American drama film, based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. The film was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, with notable smaller ...

'', and positively reviewed the performances of Pacino and Hackman, the writing and setting. In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'',

Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...

called Max and Lion "classic drifters" and "marvelously realized characters." In a review of ''Scarecrow'' upon its 2013 rerelease,

Peter Bradshaw Peter Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire''. Early life and education Bradshaw was educated at Haberdasher ...

of ''The Guardian'' described the film as "a freewheeling masterpiece," describing Hackman and Pacino as giving "the performances of their lives."

Peter Biskind Peter Biskind (born 1940) is an American cultural critic, film historian, journalist and former executive editor of ''Premiere'' magazine from 1986 to 1996. Biography He attended Swarthmore College and wrote several books depicting life in Holl ...

has described the film as of "secondary" significance in his book ''

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls ''Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood'' is a book by Peter Biskind, published by Simon & Schuster in 1998. ''Easy Riders, Raging Bulls'' is about the 1960s and 1970s Hollywood, a period of Amer ...

''. By 2012, ''Scarecrow'' was among the best-reviewed films in Schatzberg's career. After gaining a cult following, Schatzberg recruited Seth Cohen to write a sequel, and a screenplay was completed by 2013. The sequel would be set years after ''Scarecrow'', with Max and computer worker Lion reuniting, and Lion learning that his son is alive. The sequel project was complicated by the studio's lack of support and Hackman's retirement from acting. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds a rating of 76% from 33 reviews with the consensus: "If its dramatic dressings are a tad threadbare, ''Scarecrow'' survives on the strength of its lead performances and Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography."

References

External links