Scarecrow

Scarecrow (1973) is a watch-online road drama on iFILM directed by Jerry Schatzberg, starring Gene Hackman and Al Pacino as two drifters crossing the American Midwest. It took home the Palme d'Or at Cannes that year, beating out competition that included Day for Night.

Max just finished a prison stretch and has enough cash saved to open a car wash in Pittsburgh. Lion has been at sea for five years and has just learned he has a child back home he never met. They meet at a highway shoulder and keep moving together — through small towns, flophouses, odd jobs and the occasional brawl Max can't resist starting. Lion's response to every fight is to clown his way out of it. It works, until it doesn't.

Schatzberg and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond shot the film with a near-documentary flatness that makes Hackman and Pacino look genuinely found rather than cast. The friendship that develops between two men who have nothing in common except nowhere particular to be is the whole film — unforced, unresolved, and quietly devastating by the end. Stream Scarecrow (1973) online on iFILM.