Daily News from New York, New York • 304

I I oc i Sensitive Bums; Lead Balloon; Mainy Doats THE MOVIES can even make grime look good. Scarecrow, at Cinema is something I never expected to see a movie about sensitive hobos in which even the body odor seems endorsed by Vogue. The film was directed by Jerry Schatzberg, who used to be a fashion photog rapher, and shot by ilmos Zsigmond, whose beautiful camerawork for Delirerance should have won him an Oscar, so you know it looks great. Opening shot: Gene Hackman crosses a barren plain, gets caught on a barbed wire fence, and works his way down to a Al Pacino (I.) and Gene Hackman play drifters in "Scarecrow." eye." And before you can give the peace sign, he's throwing his evil father's riches out of windows, denouncing his parents as pagans, banding together all the dropouts, and winning over the prettiest girl in town. Naturally, they all turn into Franciscan monks apd live in poverty (he even strips naked in the square to prove he hates worldly possessions), thumbing Iheir noses at the Establishment.

I'm sure Zefferelji means the film to be an extension of the rebellious philosophy of youth today in its fight against the greed, avarice and war of an adult society, but St. Francis comes off quite mad (at least the way he is played by Zefferelli discovery Graham Faulkner there isn't much doubt). Faulkner doesn't say much. He just silently suffers and agonizes until he grows tiresome. The film vividly depicts the Giotto frescoes and pastel vistas of authentic locales in Assisi and the Umbrian hills where the history happened, but it is so awash with medieval pomp and pageantry it is eventually' suffocated by decor.

One soon grows weary of nuns photographed through cheesecloth. The sickening, lachrymose whining of Donovan only adds unnecessary pretentiousness to a work already weakened by giddy romanticism. There is sweetness and good will in Brother Sun, Sister Moon, but despite its Renaissance tapestry, its values in the cruel reality of 1973 seem hopelessly corny. Zefferelli has fashioned a stylish epitaph for this flower child, but let's face it St. Francis was always a bore and I hope to God the movies will now let him rest in Panavision peace.

Watching Class of '44 (at thcSutton), it occurred to me that the only reason for its existence must be that Warner to find some way to utilize all those leftover forties props. In this lama sequel to Summer of '42, good use is made of old -Chesterfield ads, 78 recordings by Carmen Miranda, Dick Haymes and the Modernaires, and wedgies. But nothing much happens to enhance the reputations of Benjy, Hermie and Oscy. Benjy talks Guadalcanal over banana splits and a Melorol before taking off for the Oscy gets expelled from college for pimping for a local whore in the fraternity house. And Hermie packs Dixie Cups for national defense, learns how to cheat on exams, and becomes a man when his father dies.

Who cares We never even met the father. All Class of "44 does is (1) prove Gary Grimes is growing some facial peach fuzz, and (2) introduce a stunning little vixen named Deborah Winters, who invades Cybil Shepard's WASP territory like a pubescent Lana Turner. This is carrying a good thing too far and it's all been done better lin other films. Class of '44 is not in the same league with A Separate Peace, Red Sky at Morning or the early college scenes in Carnal Knowledge. There's more to growing up than going through the motions and dragging out an old recording of "Mairzy Doats" at a college prom is just going through the motions.

in road to hitch a ride. It's a relatively simple snot to set up. but Schatzberg and Zsigmond make it look like an Andrew Wyeth painting. There's a slickness to Scarecrow, and that's part of its problem. You are so busy noticing it that you forget how empty and meaningless it is.

Tt's a movie that builds itself out of chic sweat and diversionary tactics. No bricks, just Tinker Tovs. "I'm the meanest S.O.B. alive," says Hackman. "I don't trust anybodv, I don't love anybody.

Then he meets up with Al Pacino, a wastrel hitching cross country to deliver a gift to his kid, whom he's never seen. Two bums on the road named Max and Lion, trying to get their act together. They've got an idea for a car wash, they pick, op broads, they have a few beers. The old bum knows the ropes, but times have changed. The hobos have vanished from the old tracks, the hustler's racket isn what it used to be.

The film eventually settles into a kind of sad complacency about its own trashiness. We care about Max and Lion will they get their car wah. will Uon see his kid in Detroit, will Max and Frenrhy settle down but then it becomes clear they are happy with their way of life, going from brawl to beer can. And finally, we relinquish interest. Thev end up in a model prison near Denver.

Lion gets his face beat in for resisting a sexual assault, his wife has re-married and although we see his infant son on the floor near the phone, she tells him his child is dead. He grows mnre-morose as Max takes on his sense of humor. The roles are reversed. Lion sinks into a catatonic state and Max takes care of him. They have learned something about love, but we learn nothing.

It's Midnight Cowboy with varicose veins. Gene Hackman and Al Pacino are "wonderful, flexible, yeasty actors who make even the most trivial dialogue come alive, but their work in Scarecrow -is too sophisticated for the film to support. Al Pacino, as Lion, is supposed to be the funny one. It's his humor that wins Max over. But the script never gives him anything funny to do.

So, in the best Actors Studio method, he improvises. He does an impersonation of Robert Newton as Long John Silver that works as an acting exercise, but wrecks the movie. It is just too slick for the character. How many hobos have even heard of Robert Newton There's too much of that clowning around, and it only emphasizes the deficiencies of the paper-thin story instead of disguising them. Six years in jail and Hackman wonders if the Hit Parade is still on the air.

The Hit Where were the researchers? Didn't anybody read the script? Brother Sun, Sister Moon (Coronet) is another sublimely photographed lead balloon. Just why anyone would want to make another movie about Francis of Assisi is a mystery to me. Michael Curtiz made a ponderous mess of it in 1961, with Bradford Dill man as a pious bore in monk's rags; now Franco Zefferelli has tried it again, pitching the story to the youth market, but although he has concentrated less on the panorama of the 13th century and more on the spiritual awakening of the boy who ended the Dark Ages and made a tremendous impact on the seven centuries that followed, I can't see that there has been much improvement. Zef erelli's saint has all the makings of a contemporary hippie martyr. He is an army deserter who comes home from the war, chases butterflies and does bird calls.

Naturally, the whole town thinks he's a fruitcake. But the peasants love him because he talks to sparrows on windowsills and prances through poppy fields while Donovan sings "Through the meadows there go as the flowers please my OF THE YEAR'S RADIO Cmjt-JiCIIIE HALL: SHOWPLACC OF THE NATION THE HCAMT OF ROCKEFELLER CCNTCM 757-3100 MOST SPECIAL FILMS Together at Showcase Theatres. 'GRATIFACTION!" One of the best GRATIFICATION and SATISFACTION! An unbeatable combination for you and the whole family at the Great Easter Show this weekend! 4 It films about youth fMf ever made. tWfh ne neea, n. i.

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