Scarecrow (1973)

Friendship can show up in the unlikeliest places, like a lonely stretch of highway with your thumb out. Jerry Schatzberg's "Scarecrow" is one of the great forgotten buddy films of the 1970s. Somehow it never found a wide audience, even though both stars were at their peak, Gene Hackman fresh from "The French Connection" and Al Pacino from "The Godfather." They play two drifters hitchhiking across America who meet by chance and discover an unexpected kinship. Hackman's Max, a hot-tempered ex-con, would rather pile on another layer of clothes than risk letting anyone get close. Pacino's Lion, a sweet, clownish former sailor heading to Detroit to meet the child he has never seen, gets under Max's skin and slowly teaches him to open up. Together they dream of saving enough money to open a car wash in Pittsburgh. But no matter how hard they try to keep each other out of trouble, their friendship can protect them only so far, though each takes something valuable away. The performances are endearing without ever turning sentimental, and Pacino proves he could have been a gifted screen comic as easily as a great dramatic actor. Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography captures the lonely beauty of the American landscape. It shared the top prize, the Palme d'Or, at the Cannes Film Festival.