Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Scarecrow Blu-ray Movie Review

Kings of the Road

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 7, 2017

Scarecrow arrived in theaters with great anticipation, thanks to the much-advertised pairing of Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, both of whom had become box office draws after Hackman's Oscar-winning performance in The French Connection and Pacino's Oscar-nominated appearance on The Godfather (he would be nominated again for Serpico, which appeared the same year as Scarecrow). Despite the pre-release excitement, the film landed with a thud at the U.S. box office, as audiences expecting the intensity of Popeye Doyle colliding with Michael Corleone instead found a meandering road picture about two losers going nowhere. In Europe, however, director Jerry Schatzberg's follow-up to The Panic in Needle Park (also starring Pacino) enjoyed a much warmer reception, receiving that year's Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival (which it shared with a British film, The Hireling).

Scarecrow is the kind of work that no major studio would bankroll today, regardless of the talent involved. A quintessential product of Seventies' cinematic rebellion, the film is a natural successor to moody, actor-driven projects like Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens—but with even less plot. It's a melancholy tone poem of isolation punctuated by brief moments of connection, and it wouldn't work without the peculiar chemistry of Hackman and Pacino, unlikely traveling companions who become as dependent on each other as Beckett's two tramps eternally waiting in the wilderness.

Scarecrow has been released on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive Collection, which has performed its usual exemplary work in bringing cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond's expressive widescreen panoramas to home video.

Scarecrow recounts the adventures (if you can call them that) of two hitchhiking sad sacks who first meet when they're competing for a ride from the occasional passing vehicle on a deserted country road in northern California. Max Millan (Hackman) has just been released from prison after a six-year stint for assault. His destination is Pittsburgh, where he plans to open Maxie's Car Wash, an enterprise that he's certain will set him up for life. He's been saving for years, and he has everything planned out in a small notebook he keeps carefully tucked away, next to his heart.

Francis Lionel Delbuchi (Pacino), whom Max quickly christens "Lion" because he has bad associations with the name Francis, has recently left the Navy and is heading to Detroit to see the girlfriend he abandoned when she was pregnant. Though he has steadily sent money, Lion has remained so thoroughly out off contact that he doesn't even know whether the child is a boy or a girl. But he's bought a gift, and he's proud of having picked out something he considers to be unisex. He guards the box and its red bow as tenderly as if it were an infant.

Except for their straitened circumstances, Max and Lion have little in common. Max is suspicious of people, quick to anger and prone to the kind of physical violence that landed him in jail. Lion is gregarious and an instinctive comic, hyperkinetically hopping around with jokes and physical routines, often in an effort to defuse a tense situation created by Max. These two don't belong together, but they form a bond based on mutual need, because neither of them has anyone else. Max quickly declares Lion his "partner" and assures him that, as soon as they reach Pittsburgh, the car wash will solve all of their problems.

We know from the outset that Maxie's Car Wash is a pipedream for someone as sullen and impulsive as Max, but we also know that the illusion sustains him from day to day by giving him a reason to keep moving forward. Lion is happy to share the fantasy, as the pair zigzags across America, bumming rides, hopping freight trains and viewing the expansive landscape from the same outsider's perspective as Wyatt and Billy in Easy Rider. Schatzberg and the production company left the comforts of the studio to film on location, shooting in continuity and capturing a memorable scrapbook of back roads, train yards and forgotten towns. Along the way, the partners stop in Colorado, where Max looks up an old friend, Coley (Dorothy Tristan), and enjoys a brief fling with her business partner, Frenchy (Ann Wedgeworth). They also inspire a raucous celebration at a roadside tavern, then land themselves in a minimum security prison farm, after Max hauls off and slugs a guy. Doing the month-long sentence turns out to be much tougher for one half of the pair.

The film's title comes from a story that Lion tells Max shortly after they meet, a parable about how crows look at scarecrows. Depending on one's interpretation, it's either wryly amusing or desperately sad, and the same duality defines Scarecrow. As the buddies haltingly approach their twin destinations, the free spirit of the road is threatened by the stubborn realities that Lion and Max have managed to hold at arm's length through the power of friendship and shared illusion. The film's conclusion is open-ended, and Schatzberg has reportedly been trying for years to interest Hackman and Pacino in a sequel, but Scarecrow is complete on its own terms: a pungent slice of life on the fringe, lived with intensity.

Scarecrow Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The cinematographer on Scarecrow was the late Vilmos Zsigmond, a poet of Panavision who had just photographed Deliverance for John Boorman and would shortly shoot a more kinetic road movie, The Sugarland Express, for Steven Spielberg. Zsigmond's expressive frames situate Max and Lion against landscapes that recall Easy Rider in their variety and dusty authenticity. For this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection, an interpositive of recent vintage was scanned at 2K by Warner's Motion Picturing Imaging facility. MPI's color correction used a dye-transfer release print as a reference, followed by WAC's customarily thorough cleanup to remove dirt, scratches and damage.

The Blu-ray image reflects Scarecrow's origination on film, with a natural and finely resolved grain field that is noticeable but never intrusive, except (marginally) in the opening titles, which were optically superimposed. The degree of sharpness and detail varies somewhat as the lighting shifts, with a fall-off in dim interiors like Turk's Supper Club, where Zsigmond often diffuses a moody reddish glow. Nightime scenes are similarly dim, but never to the point where visibility is compromised, and the blacks are solidly rendered. Daytime detail is excellent, which is crucial for the film's many expansive frames picking up background minutia, whether of the natural landscape, of train yards and crumbling city outskirts, or of the junk-strewn backyard of Coley's home/business. Scarecrow's palette is quietly understated, with some of the brightest colors seen in Max's motley wardrobe, which he wears in layers because he's always cold.

WAC has mastered Scarecrow at its usual high average bitrate, here 34.98 Mbps.

Scarecrow Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scarecrow's original mono soundtrack has been taken from the magnetic masters, cleaned of age-related defects and encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The presentation is authentic and accurate, but it won't win any awards. The dialogue was recorded as production sound, with little or no post-dubbing, and the voices are thin, hollow and occasionally hard to understand (though it's not as if every word is essential in this saga). The effects are minimalist, and there is almost no underscoring, although source music can be heard from jukeboxes and radios. (The sparse cues were written by Fred Myrow, composer of Phantasm.) The Blu-ray track deserve a high mark for accuracy, faithfully reproducing a purely functional source.

Scarecrow Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2005 DVD of Scarecrow. The trailer has been remastered in 1080p.

• On the Road with Scarecrow (1.33:1; 480i; 4:18): This vintage featurette offers glimpses of Hackman, Pacino, Schatzberg and Zsigmond at work.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.40:1; 3:21): The trailer implies a more comedic tone than the film delivered: "The only difference between them and the Rockefellers is a few hundred million dollars and about 1500 miles."

Scarecrow Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Scarecrow isn't for everyone, but it's a memorable experience powered by two of America's greatest screen actors in peak form. The characters they're bringing to life may be nobodies, but Hackman and Pacino make them unforgettable. WAC's Blu-ray presents this quietly provocative artifact of the Seventies film revolution with the intensity and vividness that its scope deserves. Highly recommended.