Taxi Driver

Horrorphile

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Taxi Driver

August 26th 2010 23:51

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.” --- Thomas Wolfe, “God’s Lonely Man”

Five features into his distinguished career, but only his third major release, director Martin Scorsese delivered Taxi Driver (1976), the first of three masterpieces; Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990) being the other two. At once a searing portrait of emotional alienation and psychological deterioration with a realm of urban decay, and also a blistering study of humankind’s innate loneliness and man’s propensity for extreme violence, Taxi Driver is still as powerful and dangerous now, as it was 35 years ago.

Robert De Niro as Travis

Jodie Foster as Iris

Screenwriter (and filmmaker) Paul Schrader penned the potent tale of Travis Bickle’s pathological despair in five days following his own nervous breakdown, being rejected by his girlfriend and in the midst of a divorce. He didn’t talk to anyone for weeks, frequented porn cinemas, and an obsession with firearms meant he kept a loaded gun on his desk for inspiration and motivation. Brian De Palma was slated to direct, but was fired. With the gritty realism of Mean Streets (1973) and the emotional depth of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore on his resume, Martin Scorsese entered the picture and brought with him Robert De Niro, who’d just won an Oscar for The Godfather Part II (1974), and the rest is history.

Cybil Shepherd as Betsy

Travis Bickle (De Niro) is a Vietnam veteran who takes a job as a cab driver in New York City, working long hours and driving to all the boroughs. His only acquaintances are a handful of other cabbies working for the same company. Bickle attempts a romance with uptown Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who is working on the political campaign for Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), a Presidential candidate, but he screws that up royally. Twelve-year-old streetwalker Iris (Jodie Foster) crosses his path on several occasions, and as the weight of the city’s filth bears down on him and his psyche begins to crack Bickle decides to save Iris and free her from the pimp shackles (Harvey Keitel as Sport) of her pathetic prostituted existence.

Taxi Driver Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro

Sport (Harvey Keitel) gives Travis an earful

From the opening image of the subway steam filling the screen and Bernard Herrmann’s jazz-wounded score soaked in melancholy, the ominous strings scraping, the sad alto saxophone singing a song of desperation, a yellow checkered cab pushes through the white subterranean mist of the city and begins its long drawl in and out of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx, uptown, downtown, midtown and the lower East side. Taxi Driver is Scorsese’s dark ode to the city that never sleeps, capturing the quintessential grime and low-life glamour of 70s NYC that perpetually feeds its moral and physical corruption.

Martin Scorsese as a cuckolded passenger

“Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is … a man who stood up.”

Taxi Driver Steven Prince and Robert De Niro

Easy Andy (Steven Prince) offers Travis his ballistic expertise

Building steadily towards its frightening, shattering denouement Taxi Driver is a tour-de-force of direction and performance. Robert De Niro is mesmerising in his method brilliance, Cybil Shephard exudes a wonderful coquettish charm, Harvey Keitel provides the perfect sleazy foil to De Niro’s deadly coiled spring, while Jodie Foster (in the defining year of her career) exhibits amazing subtlety and vulnerability. A nod also to Steven Prince, in one scene as Easy Andy, a cocky gun salesman with style and merchandise to burn (Scorsese would later make a short doco called American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince).

It’s curious to note the extraordinary who’s who of actors who were offered or auditioned for (and in some cases cast, but withdrew) the role of Betsy; Farrah Fawcett, Jane Seymour, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Ornella Muti, Isabelle Adjani, Liza Minnelli, Barbara Hershey, and Sigourney Weaver, and the role of Iris; Melanie Griffith, Ellen Barkin, Kim Basinger, Geena Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Brooke Shields, Debra Winger, Carrie Fisher, Mariel Hemingway, Bo Derek, Kim Cattrall, Rosanna Arquette, Kristy McNichol, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Linda Blair.

Taxi Driver Garth Avery, Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro

Travis gets to know Iris who is with her friend (Garth Avery, a hooker whom Scorsese modeled Iris on)

Martin Scorsese himself appears in two scenes; the first is a silent background cameo (seated on a ledge outside Palantine’s campaign office), but the second is as one of Travis’s more unhinged fares, spouting a disturbing, misogynist monologue which undoubtedly contributes to Bickle’s already heavily affected and troubled persona. Scorsese stepped into the role after the intended actor sustained injuries prior to filming.

The psychological cracks widen

Whilst Bickle’s psychosis slow burn (narrated in diary form) toward the inevitable brain-snap is the movie’s tightening focus, it is the ultra-violent bloodbath at movie’s end that provides Taxi Driver with its piece de resistance (although Robert De Niro’s improvised “You talkin’ to me?” scene commands its own cult adoration). Dick Smith, special effects make-up legend, was hired to provide shocking authenticity to the brothel carnage, but ironically Scorsese was forced to desaturate the blood’s hue (making it look an odd pinky brown colour) in order to avoid an X-rating. It still packs a punch, especially the shocking .44 Magnum impact to the hand. Smith also made the famous Mohawk wig for De Niro (which I always thought was real!)

Kiss kiss bang bang

Taxi Driver continues to impress and fascinate; superficially as a date stamp of mid-70s New York City (Scorsese shot entirely on location), but more importantly Scorsese’s effortlessly fluid, but controlled and deliberate visual narrative that never once feels contrived, yet sustains the tension of a crouching tiger, a sleeping cobra, a lost soul at the end of his tether. Schrader’s story wraps up with a curious epilogue that has Iris’s father’s voice-over praise on Travis Bickle’s rescue efforts while the camera drifts over newspaper clippings describing the gun-battle with the gangsters and his subsequent pedestal as urban hero.

But has this twist of fate actually happened, or is it just a figment of Bickle’s distorted imagination, a wish-fulfillment fantasy he’s projecting in the moments before his death as he sits on the sofa mortally wounded …?

Scorsese adds a coda to suggest otherwise: Travis Bickle back behind the wheel of his safety net, his trusty checkered cab, on the dark crowded streets of the big rotten apple, and low and behold, into the back seat climbs Betsy. The vibe is awkward; she acts aloof, “Travis I’m … How much was it?” Travis replies, “So long”, as he clears the meter. She gets out, he drives off, but something catches his eye in the rear-view mirror and Travis does a double-take …

We’ll always wonder just what was it that caught the paranoid eye of God’s lonely man, perhaps it’s best we never found out …

Here's the trailer:

You talkin' to me?

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

13 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Deni

August 27th 2010 00:31

Abstract Magick
Cinema Herald

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this movie and NEVER tire of watching it. I agree with your list of Scorsese greats. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas are my top three.

Comment by ShaunK

August 27th 2010 03:26

Screen Adventure

Here the little guy is! Absolutely superb review Bryn, a film that should be in any every film reviewers repertoire (of the 3 you mentioned I've only reviewed Goodfellas) but am waiting for the right moment when I can really do it justice

For me the Bernard Herrman score is so iconic, every time I hear it on it's own, the film's images rush back into my head. I've seen this film so many times. funnily enough the first time I ever saw it was with my parents on TV when I was a kid which I find ironic and it stuck with me ever since.

In the end when he catches his reflection do you think he gets a glimpse of himself? is that what scares him for a moment?

Also you could say that there is only one small flaw in Taxi Driver, but it would take too long to write out....I'll mention it when I do my own review one of these days.

Comment by Bryn

August 27th 2010 04:43

Horrorphile

I remember seeing a heavily cut version on TV when I was much younger, of which the bit I remember most was the disclaimer that came up just as Travis was about to enter the brothel at the end that stated bullshit about there being a fine line between reality and fantasy and something about ultraviolence or something, I can't actually remember what it said, but it was some kind of lame excuse/explanation over the cutting of the entire bloodbath sequence.
Yes, perhaps it is Travis catching a glimpse of himself. Essentially it suggests that he's not alright, and could snap again at any given moment, that despite saving Iris he's really no better than he was, he'll never win Betsy's heart, nor any woman's, because he's a paranoid, lonely and dangerous man, a distorted product of the aftermath of war and the failed integration back into society.
Or something like that.
Thanks for the props man.

Comment by David O'Connell

August 27th 2010 05:55

20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic

There's only one way to move from here mate.

Fantastic review.
This is just about my favourite film of all time.

And Shaun, yep the Herrmann score is perfection. Late at night, turn off the lights and soak it up. Not his greatest or most complex by any means but as memorably linked to the film as any score he ever wrote - including his work with Hitchcock, The Day the Earth Stood Still or any of the epic Harryhausen films.

Comment by Bryn

August 27th 2010 08:58

Horrorphile

David, cheers mate, means a lot.

Comment by Lovetrucker

August 27th 2010 12:59

Lovetrucker

I love the movie and Herrmann's great music score. When I think of the movie I can hear the music, like Last Tango in Paris.

Comment by Mountain Fog

August 28th 2010 07:47

Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!

excellent review Bryn,
this film is one of the great cinematic works of all time; it hits hard with its tough social commentary.

I also see it as a surreptitious criticism of how the US failed to properly look after its returned soldiers, some of whom ended up in gaol for causing mayhem.

Your review makes me want to get it out and watch it again, its been well over 20 years since I've seen it.

cheers

fog

Comment by James Rickard

August 28th 2010 22:57

unlucky_ fishermen.com
Angling Fish
Check this out...

As I often say, I agree with your review entirely!!!! This movie made a De Niro fan out of me and added Scorsese to the list of directors I always see. I never would have guessed the Mohawk was a wig! Knowing how De Niro works, I always figured it was real! And as for the blood, I didn't know that either! Thanks for adding those tid-bits!!!

Comment by JohnDoe

August 29th 2010 15:33

Film & TV on DVD

Nice personalizing of a deeply analyzed classic Bryn.

Though I do prefer Mean Streets, I still love Taxi Driver too. The social commentary on loneliness and isolation, the observations on modern man at the core of the attraction.

Jodie Foster peaked very young and has never brought this kind of substance to a role since.

De Niro is naturally exceptional. and yes the look of in the mirror deserves discussion. For me its as simple as he sees himself without the mask.

there is such a frenzied energy to the film and the last 15 minutes are a shattering, nerve jangling experience that few films will ever achieve.

Comment by Bryn

August 31st 2010 00:47

Horrorphile

Fog, I quite agree about failure to look after returned servicemen dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.

James, pleasure.

JD, Mean Streets was Scorsese's blueprint. But it's rough and tenebrous, though not necessarily a bad thing.

Comment by Bryn

September 20th 2010 06:55

Horrorphile

Acai, righto, cheers!

Comment by Anonymous

September 21st 2012 11:07

Your review accomplishes in dissecting this rather satirically dark film to actually mean more than just a digusted individual moping about the world. I enjoyed reading your articles and how the choice of film are as gritty as your writings on them.