"TAXI DRIVER" - A MAN WITH A MISSION TO CLEAN UP THE DECAYING CITY AND SEX RACKET
"TAXI DRIVER" - A MAN WITH A MISSION TO CLEAN UP THE DECAYING CITY AND SEX RACKET
If you ask me who my favorite author is, I'd say American writer Ernest Hemingway. Similarly, if you ask me who my favorite actor is, I'd say Robert De Niro. It was actor Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese who made me watch this movie set in 1970s New York City, United States of America.
A wonderfully engaging and convincing slide into modern madness from a director and actor, showcasing some of their best form.
Taxi Driver is a landmark 1976 American psychological drama and neo-noir film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. Set against the gritty backdrop of a morally decaying, post-Vietnam War New York City, the film features Robert De Niro in his iconic role as Travis Bickle, an alienated and insomniac veteran whose mental stability rapidly deteriorates as he drives a night-shift cab. It is widely celebrated as one of the greatest and most influential films in cinema history.
The movie has a rating of ****8.2/10 on IMDb and ****8.2/10 on Amazon Prime Video.
The movie runs 1 hour and 54 minutes.
The 1976 film Taxi Driver won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and received four Academy Award nominations.
Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he has insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner with strong opinions about what is right and wrong in humanity. For him, the one bright spot in humanity is Betsy, a worker on Senator Charles Palantine's presidential nomination campaign. After an incident, he believes he must do whatever it takes to make the world a better place.
Travis, a former Marine and Vietnam War veteran, works as a taxi driver in New York City. One day, he decides to save an underage prostitute from her pimp in an effort to clean the city of its corruption.
THE PLOT:
Jodie Foster and Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver
Lonely ex-Marine Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), recently returned from the Vietnam War, takes a job as a taxi driver and tries to meet the woman of his dreams, Betsy (Cybil Shepherd), a campaign worker for presidential hopeful Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). Travis and Betsy strike up a friendship, but when Travis tries to take her to a Swedish sex movie, Betsy walks out of the theater and refuses to see him again. Travis then turns his attention to cleaning up New York City's decadence. He befriends 12-year-old child prostitute Iris "Easy" Steamsma (Jodie Foster) and declares war on her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel).
Taxi Driver was based on a screenplay by American screenwriter Paul Schrader. Schrader says he was inspired by his own experiences living in a car after a divorce and breakup with his girlfriend. He also says that he was inspired by the diaries of Arthur Bremer (the man who attempted to assassinate U.S. democratic presidential candidate George Wallace on 15 May, 1972) as well as Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (1864), both of which depict the loneliness and isolation of feeling alienated amidst a bustling society.
Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver
Travis Bickle is a Vietnam veteran who cannot sleep at night and just ends up traveling around. To use his time effectively, he becomes a taxi driver. Things start to look up for him as he works nights and slowly starts to live a little bit. He meets a girl, Betsy, and arranges to see her a few times even though he is a little bit out of the ordinary, a quality that seems to interest her. His connection to the night allows him to see young prostitute Iris being bullied by her pimp Matthew, and he begins to see his role as perhaps saving her, him playing his part in cleaning up the sewer that he feels New York has become. However, when his view of normal life puts Betsy off him, he retreats further into the night, looking for meaning in his life and growing increasingly outraged by the world he is part of.
Hardly the most uplifting of films, it is engaging, impressive, and truly deserves its reputation. Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader have produced a film that convincingly portrays a man cut off from society, with the slightest connection to normality, before it is eroded away. The script is brilliant because the detail is engaging, but it is this descent into a very modern type of madness that drives the film forward. Travis has just enough recognizable about him that it makes it easy to go along with the rest of his madness. A major part of this is getting the feeling right about living in a cesspit; a city that seems to have forgotten its way morally. New York is the strongest example, but I suspect elements of it could fit any city. By painting this world so realistically, Scorsese makes Travis all the more convincing and, to a point, easier to follow in his fall. As I said, it is not a film to morally uplift you but one that is depressingly fair. There is no redemption in this modern world, and although the violence at the end somehow redeems Travis by showing "society" accepting his actions, it drags the rest of us closer to the world he hates and has become part of. I love The King of Comedy for the same reason, albeit in a different world.
Travis descending into madness. What makes the film even better is De Niro showing the type of form that makes his recent form such a major disappointment. He is outstanding as he moves Travis from being relatively normal to being eaten up from the inside out. His eventual implosion is impressive, but it is only as impressive as the gradual slide he depicts over the course of the film. Although he dominates it, others impress as well. Foster stands out in a small role, while Keitel makes a good impression as the pimp. Shepherd isn't quite as good, but her character isn't as well written as the others, so it isn't all on her. Regardless, the film belongs to De Niro, and although the quotable scenes are the ones people remember, he excels in the quieter moments and shows genuine talent and understanding.
Scorsese injects a real understanding of the place and a real sense of foreboding into even the earliest scenes. He inserts clever, meaningful shots into scenes that other directors might have filmed straight, and his scene and shot choices complement what the script depicts.
Overall, an impressive and morally depressing film that deserves its place in cinematic history. The portrayal of a city and a man slipping into moral insanity is convincing and engaging, and it shows how well to "do" modern madness and the effects of the moral void in parts of society. Scorsese directs like a master despite being early in his career, and De Niro is chillingly effective, dominating the film in quiet moments and quotable ones alike. I rarely use phrases like "modern classic" because I think they are lazy, but this film certainly deserves the label.
In the cleaner, brighter, shinier New York of 2026, it seems the cleansing process Bickle brooded about (“Some day a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets”) has actually happened.
Today, "New York City" is a bustling city with hope and endless dreams for all citizens in the world.
It's become a critical tradition to muse on how much has changed in New York since Travis Bickle, unforgettably played by the live-wire Robert De Niro, roamed the nighttime streets in his checker cab. He’s the insomniac ex-marine, traumatized by Vietnam, so hardened he doesn’t mind going to scary rough places such as … Brooklyn. Rejected by beautiful political aide Betsy (Cybil Shepherd) after a catastrophic date at one of the ubiquitous porn theaters, Travis becomes ambiguously obsessed with child prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster), abused by her pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel). The violent pressure inside his skull is made worse by listening to the psychotic fantasies of a creepy passenger, a cameo from Scorsese himself. Chekhov said that a gun introduced in act one goes off in act two: as for a suitcase full of guns bought in a scuzzy hotel room from a guy called Easy Andy.
Martin Scorsese’s 1976 neon-lit ordeal shocker Taxi Driver is back once again to deliver another punch to the solar plexus, with a screenplay by Paul Schrader, a superlative jazz score by Bernard Herrmann, and cinematography by Michael Chapman – revived in UK cinemas as part of the Scorsese retrospective at London’s BFI Southbank. It was last re-released here six years ago for its 35th anniversary and five years before that for the 30th.
You can also find yourself forgetting the fascinating day-lit scenes in the political office, where Albert Brooks gives a great, overlooked performance as the nervous, nerdy researcher Tom, who fails to get to first base with Betsy. (Disturbingly, Scorsese’s passenger is hanging around outside there, too.) They are working for Senator Charles Palatine (Leonard Harris), a candidate in the presidential primaries – party unspecified – who is at risk of assassination. Like Robert Altman’s Nashville, Taxi Driver had a dark political significance in that bicentennial year of 1976. Palatine’s slogan is “We are the people.” Only on this viewing did viewers notice the posters for his opponent, Goodwin, whose slogan was the familiar-sounding “A Return to Greatness.”
TRIVIA:
Robert De Niro prepared for the role by working as a late-night cab driver in New York City in early 1975. One fare was a struggling actor who recognized him from The Godfather Part II (1974). The young actor said to De Niro discouragingly, "Wait a minute, you just won an Oscar. My God... is it THAT hard to get work?"
Robert De Niro worked fifteen-hour days for a month driving cabs as preparation for this role. He also studied mental illness, and during his off-time while filming 1900 (1976), he visited a US Army base in Northern Italy and tape-recorded conversations with Midwestern soldiers so that he could pick up their accent.
When Paul Schrader first wrote the script, he thought he was writing about loneliness, but as the process went on, he realized he was writing about loneliness as a pathology. His theory was that, for some reason, some young men (such as Schrader himself) subconsciously push others away to maintain their isolation, even though their torment comes from that very isolation.
Taxi Driver's visual mastery still grips, especially the fixed camera shots on the side of the cab and the vérité scenes on the real mean streets. De Niro’s two dialogue scenes with Foster and Shepherd are superb.
Go watch it... !!
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