Scarecrow (1973 Jerry Schatzberg)

Sharing the Palme D'Or at Cannes with The Hireling this is another of those films you just don't seem to get anymore. Gene Hackman and particularly Al Pacino are wonderful as drifters who bond against a background of grimy industrial America, occasionally caught with some beauty by Vilmos Zsigmond, as evidenced in this shot:

One of several outstanding long takes

Garry Michael White doesn't perhaps quite know where to go at the open end, but its another of those films from that most interesting period of American cinema that no one seems to care about any more..

Not the best known name in film history, Schatzberg had directed Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park three years earlier.

The girls are good too: Dorothy Tristan, Ann Wedgeworth and a short but unforgettable scene from Penelope Allen as Al's ex. (She turns up in Pacino's Dog Day Afternoon). The range of emotion she displays in this very short scene is amazing. Plus (briefly) Eileen Brennan - 'Shut the door, you're letting the smoke out'.

I remembered the most unpleasant scene in prison from the first viewing. Funny how film has been reclassified from an 'X' to a '12'. Has great moments, like 'The crows are laughing', Al pottering about in a garden and Gene's bar room strip. The two of them in the film's crescendo at the fountain are incredible.