Taxi Driver (1976)
 Easily one of the 10 best American films of the 1970s, Taxi
Driver radically changed Robert De Niro’s career,
establishing him as a first class character actor.
The reason is blatantly obvious to everyone watching this
powerful film by director Martin Scorsese, which sent DeNiro into
the ranks of super stardom.
Scorsese gives a brutally disturbing account of a lonely
and psychotic New York cabbie.
The experience evokes mixed
emotions; it's depressing, violent, and cynical - yet undeniably
brilliant.
Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a Vietnam veteran who can’t
sleep at night as a result of his war trauma. To pass the time he
takes on a job as a cab driver in New York, covering some of the
darkest suburbs and areas the city has to offer. He is lonely and
incapable of social contact. Every one of his attempts to mingle
with people ends in another disappointment.
He takes out Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) a young election campaign
worker, and invites her to a porn movie on their first night out.
Her terror is beyond his grasp, and his attempt to suck up to a
politician leaves the man completely suspicious. Travis is
entirely unable to communicate with society and is left to
himself.
He is sickened by the decay of society, and the scum he sees on
the streets everyday from his cab - and his inner fury is growing
on a daily basis. The only person he ends up talking to, is
himself in the mirror. But even that conversation is reduced to
paraphrases like ‘You talkin’ to me? Well, I'm the only one
here’.
With growing disgust Travis feels he needs to change things for
the better. Since politicians fail to clean up the city, someone
else has to do it. When he meets 12 year old hooker Iris (Jodie
Foster), his entire world starts to revolve around the thought of
liberating her from her pimp and her destiny in the gutters. With
a seemingly new found identity and a combat-cut he returns to the
streets armed to the eyeballs, and brings about a retaliating
massacre.
No other actor has ever played a removed anti-social anti-hero,
and his fight against urban decadence and his own dark personality
as powerful as De Niro did in Taxi Driver.
His accumulated frustration is relieving itself in almost
liberating violence that is beyond ordinary people’s
comprehension. Masterfully combined with director Scorsese’s
visual language and cinematographer Michael Chapman’s
photography, Bickle and his yellow taxi have become synonymous
with loneliness, desperation and the search for identity.
Taxi Driver already shows Scorsese's unique directing
style. Like most of his films, it develops rather slowly, giving
the viewer time to elaborate on what he is seeing. Slowly the
narrative builds and gears towards an inevitable climax, but
still, it keeps building slowly, yet consistently.
When the film finally reaches its peak in the shootout, we know
that Travis has made his point, although the execution is rather
dubious and obviously not to be recommended.
It
is exactly the kind of exaggerated action you’d expect from an
emotionally crippled person in that situation, and although he
tries to do good, he does so in an inexcusable, almost mob-like,
manner.
 Like in most of Scorsese's film his characters are dark, but
never eternally black. They hate themselves and know they are
doomed.
Still they can become heroes in their own worlds, which makes
their lives tolerable. It also bears the problem that the film’s
final resolution might not be a satisfying one on an emotional
level.
This is certainly why Scorsese included an ending sequence to
the film that shows us Travis Bickle as a hero instead of a freak.
Whether the ending is true or just a delirious illusion of the
dying Travis remains open to interpretation.
Paul Schrader's screenplay is his finest so far, and the film is haunting and unforgettable.
Academy Award Nominations: Best Picture; Best Actor (De Niro);
Best Supporting Actress (Foster).
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