Taxi Driver (18.)
Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Albert Brooks and Peter Boyle. 113 mins. 1976.
A tough call, but probably the career peak for Scorsese and De Niro, both individually and as a pairing. This 1976 movie is a perfect time capsule of both the decadent lawlessness of pre Giuliani New York and the pre-Star Wars glories of seventies American cinema.
A film about American violence that has itself taken its place in the great Chinese whisper game of US assassination: inspired by the diaries of Arthur Bremmer, the man who shot and paralysed Presidential candidate George Wallace, the film would inspire John Hinckley Jr to take a pop at Reagan.
The film has a simple Jack in the Box plot: a lonely, angry man slowly becoming increasingly tightly coiled, ready to pop. De Niro’s Travis Bickle is an absurdly straightforward, simple creation yet one that doesn’t quite add up, much like Lee Harvey Oswald.
More than Clint or Arnie or The Duke, the Mohican Travis of the film’s conclusion is the ultimate male fantasy figure: the fantasy figure of total power that he has talked himself into with the “you talking to me” monologue. But he has so much more: his self righteous, self pitying indignation; that sense of being the lone tormented figure. Plus he has the holster that slides the gun down his arm straight into his hand. What man, from the toughest tough guy to the wimpiest wimp, hasn’t fantasised about that?
The character is intense but the film is surprisingly loose. I don’t think the modern Scorsese, the airless homage maker, the meticulous sculptor of cathedrals made entirely of recycled material, would find space for scenes like those between Albert Brooks and Cybill Shepherd or those with Peter Boyle as the Wizard.
The films finds Scorsese at a perfect midpoint between the vibrant street energy of Mean Streets and the technical excellence of the films that would follow. Scriptwriter Paul Schrader said that the making him a taxi driver was a metaphor for his loneliness and estrangement, but perhaps it is also a metaphor for how the film works as a whole. It may be shot on location in some of the grimiest location in New York yet the film glides along, swept along on Bernard Herrmann’s brilliant score, a succession of almost effortlessly brilliant scenes and the effect is almost serene. It’s an intoxicating nightmare.
Probably this is the trick pulled by most of the great US films of the seventies: they offered audiences an unflinching glimpse of their country’s underbelly but in such enticing packages.
Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Albert Brooks and Peter Boyle. 113 mins. 1976.
A tough call, but probably the career peak for Scorsese and De Niro, both individually and as a pairing. This 1976 movie is a perfect time capsule of both the decadent lawlessness of pre Giuliani New York and the pre-Star Wars glories of seventies American cinema.
A film about American violence that has itself taken its place in the great Chinese whisper game of US assassination: inspired by the diaries of Arthur Bremmer, the man who shot and paralysed Presidential candidate George Wallace, the film would inspire John Hinckley Jr to take a pop at Reagan.
The film has a simple Jack in the Box plot: a lonely, angry man slowly becoming increasingly tightly coiled, ready to pop. De Niro’s Travis Bickle is an absurdly straightforward, simple creation yet one that doesn’t quite add up, much like Lee Harvey Oswald.
More than Clint or Arnie or The Duke, the Mohican Travis of the film’s conclusion is the ultimate male fantasy figure: the fantasy figure of total power that he has talked himself into with the “you talking to me” monologue. But he has so much more: his self righteous, self pitying indignation; that sense of being the lone tormented figure. Plus he has the holster that slides the gun down his arm straight into his hand. What man, from the toughest tough guy to the wimpiest wimp, hasn’t fantasised about that?
The character is intense but the film is surprisingly loose. I don’t think the modern Scorsese, the airless homage maker, the meticulous sculptor of cathedrals made entirely of recycled material, would find space for scenes like those between Albert Brooks and Cybill Shepherd or those with Peter Boyle as the Wizard.
The films finds Scorsese at a perfect midpoint between the vibrant street energy of Mean Streets and the technical excellence of the films that would follow. Scriptwriter Paul Schrader said that the making him a taxi driver was a metaphor for his loneliness and estrangement, but perhaps it is also a metaphor for how the film works as a whole. It may be shot on location in some of the grimiest location in New York yet the film glides along, swept along on Bernard Herrmann’s brilliant score, a succession of almost effortlessly brilliant scenes and the effect is almost serene. It’s an intoxicating nightmare.
Probably this is the trick pulled by most of the great US films of the seventies: they offered audiences an unflinching glimpse of their country’s underbelly but in such enticing packages.
