Taxi Driver (1976)

Taxi Driver is an American thriller film first released in 1976, directed by Martin Scorsese.  The film stars Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel and Leonard Harris.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Travis Bickle is a Vietnam War veteran whose return to civilian life in New York City is proving to be an ordeal.   In a bid to cure himself of his insomnia, he finds work as a night time taxi driver, indifferent to the risks he runs as he covers the seedier districts of the city.  When his attempt to develop a relationship with attractive presidential campaign organiser Betsy fails, Travis retreats further into his shell and he begins to foster an intense hatred for the low life he comes into contact with.  He obtains firearms and puts himself through a rigorous fitness regime, preparing himself for the day when he can start cleaning up the city and finally give meaning to his worthless existence...

A true classic of American cinema and quite possibly the best example of modern film noir, Taxi Driver is one of those films which, one seen, is never forgotten.  A powerful study in urban alienation and festering insanity, it takes us on a journey into a dark, lonely place and culminates with an ending so abrupt and shocking that it has become one of cinema’s great iconic moments (along with the famous You talkin’ to me? monologue).  The film may not have won any Oscars (despite being nominated in four categories, including Best Picture and Best Actor) but it scooped a greater prize - the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1976,  In their most successful collaboration, screenwriter Paul Schrader and director Martin Scorsese deliver a faultless existential masterpiece that palpably conveys the isolation and frustration of a profoundly disturbed war veteran as he struggles to uncover his own identity and make sense of his life, in a world from which he is hopelessly detached and which, quite frankly, doesn’t give a damn.  Michael Chapman’s strikingly impressionistic cinematography and Bernard Herrmann’s evocative score (the last he wrote before his death in 1975) not only paint a vivid picture of a desolate urban landscape that is sinking ever deeper into the mire of moral turpitude, but also take us into the inner world of the main protagonist, a place that is even darker and bleaker, the inescapable Hell of solitude and creeping mental collapse.

The part of the paranoid outsider Travis Bickle was a gift to the 32-year-old Robert De Niro and allowed him to give what is arguably his finest screen performance.  The character is a pretty unpleasant piece of work - an overt racist who fills his empty hours by watching tacky porn movies and fondling firearms, a man who loathes not only himself but everything about the world around him and who is chronically incapable of forming normal human relationships.  Yet De Niro invests the part with such humanity and substance that, loathsome as Travis Bickle is, we end up on his side.  Travis’s slow descent into madness is something we can sympathise with, although we anticipate the inevitable gruesome climax with a certain amount of trepidation.  We perhaps even grow to like Travis.  Ultimately, he represents something we can admire: a man who is determined to take a stand against a society that has lost its way and is degenerating into a crud-encrusted mountain of filth.  What does this say about us, that we can identify so easily with a sick, gun-toting xenophobe who sees the bullet as the solution to society’s ills?

Much has been made of Taxi Driver’s darkly ambiguous ending, which appears to redeem Travis and make him out to be some kind of folk hero.  This interpretation, the obvious one, is what drew the fire of various commentators when the film was first seen, but it is pretty obvious that the ending is meant in a highly ironic vein.  The film makes more sense when you consider the era in which it was made, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, two momentous events that resulted in a widespread public loss of confidence in America’s political system.  Travis Bickle personifies the Vietnam War veteran who, having done his duty for his country, is forgotten by his country when he returns home, deeply traumatised by his war time experiences.  Having failed to win honours as an American serviceman, Travis becomes a national hero when he goes on the rampage as a vigilante and despatches a few of New York’s low life to save a 12-year-old prostitute (Jodie Foster in her most memorable child role).  The moral confusion and stench of social decay that prevailed in the mid-1970s are captured in Taxi Driver with a casual ruthlessness, but what is most chilling about the film is how relevant it still feels.  Politicians are no longer considered to be the architects of progressive social change but are seen to be part of the problem.  Instead, we champion the rogue outsider, the maverick who, by unorthodox and perhaps morally dubious means, challenges the status quo and stands up for what he or she believes in.  But is Travis Bickle our saviour, the avenging angel who will help to bring about a healthier society, or is he our destroyer, a deluded fanatic who will propel us into anarchy?  The last enigmatic sequence of Travis alone in his cab leaves us in no doubt that the story is far from over.  The countdown to destruction continues unabated. 

© Steve Chandler 2011

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