Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 125: Sun May 5

Scarecrow (Schatzberg, 1973): BFI Southbank, 4pm, 6.15 & 8.45pm
This film is screening as part of an extended run from April 26th to May 5th. Details here.

New York Times review:
The road movie may have been the defining genre of the 1970s, and Jerry Schatzberg's "Scarecrow," made in 1973, is a definitive example. Starring a young Al Pacino (whom Mr. Schatzberg had promoted to stardom with his excellent, now mysteriously unavailable "Panic in Needle Park") and Gene Hackman (hitting his stride as a leading man after "The French Connection"), it is about the bond that develops between two outsiders as they hitchhike across the country, ostensibly on their way to opening a car wash together in Pittsburgh. That their vague dreams will never be fulfilled is a given; the film belongs to a time, now long past, when American movies still interested themselves in losers and the socially marginalized, rather than the pumped-up triumphalists Tom Cruise has come to embody. 

Mr. Schatzberg makes the best of the meandering, episodic script by Garry Michael White, allowing his theme - the inability of these infantilized men to connect with the grown-up women who surround them - to emerge with casual force from the apparent randomness. Dorothy Tristan (today a screenwriter), Ann Wedgeworth, Eileen Brennan and Penelope Allen contribute quick, vivid sketches of women whose fate it is to remain rooted in place while the boys move blithely on to their next misadventure. The fine widescreen transfer preserves the misty, grainy look of Vilmos Zsigmond's highly original cinematography.Dave Kehr

Here is the opening.

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