There are films that pulsate in our eyes, with a glow that traps the viewer in a state of epiphanic catatonia. And where does this warm, comforting light come from? It doesn’t come simply from their form, which does nothing more than serve as an expressive resource to the Content. I believe the glory of some great less-known films comes from their theme.

These are not programmatic films, which are intended to solely to discuss some topic. The best works of artistic ingenuity are not usually born out of well-defined interests. They are born out of sensitivity. Of great sensitivity towards men, women, their issues, their relationships – life in its most spontaneous ways (and without any dose of condescension, this capital crime of expression).

The best films do not limit the broad scope of their development to the theme. But the theme is always there, following the characters’ every step. Films like that demand from their authors a dramatist’s soul, a novelist’s will, a poet’s character. Finally, it is with these precautions that we can say that Scarecrow (1973, directed by Jerry Schatzberg) is a beautiful film about friendship.

This humble (and humiliated, since it was a commercial failure) masterpiece is a road movie that follows the wanderings of two perfect renegades: Max (Gene Hackman), a bully ex-convict; and Lion (Al Pacino), a half-clown sailor. Both are back in society after several years of exile: the first in jail, the second in the ocean. Getting to know each other on the road, Max invites Lion to become his partner in a car wash that he will inaugurate with the money saved during incarceration.

But he needs, first, to visit his ex-wife and meet the son who was born after he ran away from home. On the journey, undertaken by abject regions of the U.S. Midwest through hitchhiking and clandestine takeovers of freight trains, the ties between the two will tighten and one will begin to take on personality traits of the other, while still facing large doses of fear and hatred the world reserves for outcasts. Throughout the process, the performances of Hackman and Pacino are simply breathtaking.

In fact, just seeing these two monstrous actors acting in the same frame brings epic excitement – ​​a meeting of titans. And this encounter is further enhanced by the director’s incredible aesthetic refinement, which is predominantly based on long duration shots with a lot – and subtle – use of depth of field.

The beautiful plasticity of this film is something that reminds us vividly that cinema is, above all, a visual media – in the midst of so many films that seem to try so hard to make us forget this essential fact. The geometrically calculated photography reaches the streaks of aesthetic perfection, evoking a wise formalism that never abandons the human element, focal point in every frame. The filmmaker’s gaze is one of a voluptuousness that we see in few films.

And such voluptuousness seems to reach even a degree of synesthetic: we can almost feel the cold of Al Pacino when diving into a public fountain on a freezing afternoon; the stink of the many layers of old, tattered clothes that Gene Hackman wears to escape the same cold; the nauseating taste of small pieces of fried chicken stuck around Hackman’s mouth as he eats, which his “girlfriend” will pluck with lecherous kisses (all shown in the foreground).

And we cannot forget the oppressive silence of the opening scene, when the two protagonists meet. Four senses, brought together and mixed in the powerful suggestion of the filmmaker’s gaze behind the lens. Jerry Schatzberg is the little-known – and least successful – name of that generation that took Hollywood by storm in the 1970s (Francis Ford Coppola, Brian de Palma, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas).

But the most interesting thing is that he already had a very well established position as a professional fashion photographer, working for famous magazines like Vogue. Fact: the deeply photographic look in Scarecrow reminds a lot of the vision of another filmmaker-photographer who would appear a little later: Wim Wenders, especially in his brilliant Paris Texas (1984), another already classic road movie.

Scarecrow won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, in 1973. Schatzberg had already competed for the award a couple of years prior, with The Panic in Needle Park (1971), which also featured Al Pacino – the film ended up winning the best actress award for Kitty Winn.