Having spent most of my life in Colorado, I take note of films that bother to put us on the map. I’m also a sucker for humanist studies of working class drifters or other misfits who seek salvation outside of the traditional institutions of marriage and family. Small surprise, then, that I’d be a fan of Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg, 1973). I first saw the film at the Telluride Film Festival a few years ago, but last year it received a wider revival thanks to a digital restoration commemorating its 40th year anniversary. Gene Hackman (who worked opposite of Al Pacino on the film) has cited it as his favorite role, because it was the only film that he ever made that allowed him to work in absolute continuity that allowed him “to take all kinds of chances and really build my character.” Odd to think now that this buddy film was originally intended for Bill Cosby and Jack Lemmon, and who is to say what kind of film that would have been? All I can say in retrospect is that Hackman and Pacino shine in a way that makes it hard to picture anyone else in the title roles of, respectively, Max Millan and Francis Lionel “Lion” Delbuchi.
Casting Hackman as the pugnacious Max, a man recently released after six yeas in the slammer for beating someone up, fits in with the tough-guy roles that were making him famous. He was hot off the tracks of The French Connection (1971) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Pacino, on the other hand, had previously worked with Schatzberg on The Panic in Needle Park (1971) and recently hit gold with The Godfather (1972). He had a fragility and range that made him a good foil against Max’s confrontational character, showing us someone who would rather defuse tension rather than add fuel to the fire. Lion had been at sea, sending his money to his wife in Detroit, and is eager to unite with the child he never got a chance to see. Max has been sending the meager wages he earned while in the slammer to an S&L in Pittsburgh, and now hopes to collect the money and start up a new business by opening up a car wash. Max and Francis (dubbed “Lion” by by Max) strike up a fragile bond and hit the road together with a planned stop in Denver.
If the two actors can be hailed as the first reason to watch Scarecrow, I’d give the second reason as the use of locations. The film uses low-key realism that was not such an odd-bird back in the late sixties or early seventies (think Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail, Fat City, The Sugarland Express, California Split). Nowadays it’s a bit harder to summon up titles that carry that torch. Old Joy (2006) and last year’s Nebraska come to mind, with this year’s Boyhood arguably fitting the mold despite a time-condensing conceit that pushes at the boundaries of normal realism. What these films all have in common is the use of normal life moments and locations devoid of narrative histrionics, trumped up drama, cart-wheeling cinematography, and they furthermore eschew any use of the green-screen, car-chase, or other eye-candy types of pyrotechnics. The backdrops for Scarecrow are the road, flea-pit taverns, the lunch-counters of roadside diners, industrial wastelands on the outskirts of the cities, correctional facilities, and the kind of dust-bowl landscapes alongside the railroad tracks that remind us of earlier hard times, such as might have been seen in Of Mice and Men (1939).
Director Schatzberg is an American photographer whose work has graced some Bob Dylan album covers, here working with Vilmos Zsigmond, the Hungarian cinematographer who had already made a name for himself lensing McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), later adding Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The Deer Hunter (1978) to a long list of illustrious credits. Scarecrow won a Palme d’Or at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and was well received in Europe. Back home in the US market, it fell between the cracks. One theory for this was that the once hot-flame success of Easy Rider, which had helped green-light the production in the first place, had now run cold and Warner Bros was eager to put its marketing muscle behind the next big thing; The Exorcist (1973).
Given the tough times currently facing the shrinking middle-class across the U.S., one would think there might be a resurgent interest in films like Scarecrow. Or maybe not. After all, wasn’t it musicals that were popular during The Depression? Maybe that explains all the eye-candy currently making the rounds as people anxiously seek refuge from the woes that haunt them. At least the rest of us have some options in the wealth of films already made, and for those interested in Scarecrow it screens on TCM this Friday.
