Jerry Schatzberg, our American friend

PostED ON 9 OCTOBER, 2016 AT 11:35AM

Jerry Schatzberg has an official website where you can discover his beautiful photography and many other things. It's not the least bit surprising to find his work as profound as the New York artist himself, a man paradoxically and admirably discreet and loyal… Loyal especially to the Lumière festival!

© Institut Lumière / Photo Olivier Chassignole

This year, you must discover one of the jewels of American filmography: The Panic in Needle Park (1971), which introduced Al Pacino to the public, with his little mop of hair, as lively as he is strung out on drugs, and moreover, one of the only films where the actor really smiles. The Panic in Needle Park counts among the finest independent films of New York with its messed up characters, admirably dressed more or less in clingy sweaters and other nondescript jackets, "heroes" stranded between a bedroom with a shabby headboard and the murderous streets of heroin. Schatzberg films the junkie environment with his poisonous, sticky aesthetic, of which cannot rid ourselves. It is not the intention of the filmmaker to make all this exotic, or teach us any moral lesson, but simply to be there.

This sense of humanity, the need for one another, with a lot of wonderful little glances the young couple share, until their descent into the sordid, is a trademark and talent of Schatzberg. We see it again in the phenomenal Scarecrow (1972), Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1973. Still the same vision of the bottom layer of America, but far from the big city, a fantastic voyage with Al Pacino's brown eyes on request, tagging along the great Gene Hackman who's both bothered and intrigued by this unstable young man he will lug behind him like a parcel on legs.

There remains a one last changeover on the way to The Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow: The Day the Ponies Come Back (2000), the last film made to date by Schatzberg, a filmmaker still searching. New York is still there, but Pacino is too old to resume the role of the sensitive young hero pacing the gray streets of the city. So Guillaume Canet takes over. Humble, his shirt in the wind, the French actor knows he is working and acting for the man of The Panic in Needle Park. The intelligent modesty of Canet works, connecting him to Pacino… They both like Schatzberg.

Hurry and go see The Panic in Needle Park!

Virginie Apiou