Hear Me Out: ‘Scarecrow’ is Al Pacino’s most underrated role
Without a shadow of a doubt, no discussion over the greatest actor of all time is complete without the name of Al Pacino, who was putting out seminal work at such a rapid rate in the 1970s that one of his best-ever performances has largely gone overlooked and unmentioned.
After making his feature film debut in 1969’s Me, Natalie, he was almost immediately off to the races. Following it up with his first leading role in 1971’s The Panic in Needle Park, his third credit came in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, with his fifth arriving in Sidney Lumet’s Serpico.
The latter two are regarded as some of the best dramatic work the decade had to offer, with Pacino earning Academy Award nominations for both the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ and ‘Best Actor’ categories, respectively. However, the movie he made in between ended up slipping through the cracks as a result.
Reuniting with his The Panic in Needle Park director Jerry Schatzberg, 1973’s road drama Scarecrow partnered Pacino with a fellow future icon in Gene Hackman. Despite pairing up two of the best to ever do it, though, the movie itself was instantly dwarfed after being sandwiched between The Godfather and Serpico in the star’s back catalogue.
It did share a win for the ‘Grand Prix du Festival International du Film’ at Cannes, but it flopped in cinemas and was subsequently ignored. Sharing several strands of spiritual DNA with John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Scarecrow finds Hackman’s gruff ex-con Max Millan and Pacino’s childlike former sailor Francis Lionel Delbuchi – known as ‘Lion’ – travelling across the United States as hitchhikers and getting roped up into adventure along the way.
Very much a New Hollywood film through its downbeat and meditative approach to character, the lack of any substantial plot coherence is comfortably offset by the incredible work of its two leads. Pacino takes the less showy part of the two, offering an introspective and reserved study of somebody blindly going along with the wishes of their travelling partner, even though Lion has his own agenda.
He wants to head east to see his newborn child for the first time, projecting the sort of innocence and wide-eyed exuberance that’s rarely been regarded as among his primary performative weapons. Creating an engaging counterpoint to Hackman’s cynicism, he’s a lonely man seeking any sort of connection he can find, something that’s apparent in something as simple as a glance or gesture.
Pacino went stratospheric through a string of iconic performances that saw him embodying complex, complicated, and tortured souls, which makes Scarecrow stand out even more starkly. Lion is more expressive, outgoing, and innocent than the myriad of characters that would cement his status as one of his generation’s top talents, making the endearing, affecting, and outwardly honest portrayal the best kind of outlier.
It requires Pacino to both soften his edges and project utter believability in a movie that can’t be easily categorised in the way it exists as a two-handed buddy flick, realistic drama, and a prison movie at various points, complete with vaudevillian and slapstick elements. It’s a tonal balancing act that could have sunk the entire film if handled incorrectly. Still, Pacino somehow makes a protagonist defined almost entirely by their desire to avoid conflict and closeness likeable, fully realised, and eminently engaging.
The more famous Pacino became, the less ‘understatement’ became a word associated with his style, which by extension allowed Scarecrow to find itself almost completely ignored by being stuck directly between The Godfather and Serpico. That’s not a fate it deserves, especially when the actor’s work on-screen is comparable to anything he’s ever done and, in many cases, can be deemed superior.
Thanks to the titles released on either side of it, Scarecrow regularly – and unfairly – gets passed over when casting an eye over Pacino’s 1970s output. However, it’s a performance that stands distinctly apart from anything else he’s ever done, which is why it fully deserves to be counted among his best.
