Scarecrow

An American road film. Two men meet on a country road. Both are hitching. Max has just come out of prison. Six years, quick to fight, and he trusts nobody. Lion was a sailor. Five years at sea; he has a child he has never seen. Max has a plan. He will open a car wash in Pittsburgh and his money is in a bank. He offers Lion a partnership. From there the film is a story of travelling. Hitching, trains, buses, lorries. They go to Denver first. Max's sister is there. Then to Detroit. Lion wants to see his child. The two are complete opposites. Max turns every encounter into a fight; Lion ends every fight with a joke. Lion's method is the film's idea. When he sees a fight coming he takes his clothes off, dances, makes a fool of himself, and the other side laughs. The narrative gives it a name: a scarecrow. Max thinks a scarecrow frightens the birds; Lion says the birds laugh at it and leave the field alone for that reason. What the narrative is interested in is not a journey but armour: its idea is that both men developed a way of protecting themselves, and that when one man's method collapses the other has to carry him. There is a prison in the middle of the road. They are put inside after an incident and something happens there. The Detroit section is the break. A telephone call and the scene after it are the film's centre of gravity. It does not end well and the narrative does not announce it. Vilmos Zsigmond shot it; natural light and dust make the look of the film. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1973. Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Dorothy Tristan, Ann Wedgeworth and Eileen Brennan are in the cast. Jerry Schatzberg directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1970s American cinema and road films built on character. Who it is not for: anyone expecting incident; the narrative is loose and some sections go nowhere.