Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver captured the angst felt throughout America in the post-Vietnam era. Directed by Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver (1976) is a psychological drama and a tale of alienation, displaced sexuality, and life in the big city. The film stars Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Sheperd, Jodie Foster, Peter Boyle, and Albert Brooks. Scorsese's male protagonists tend to be energetic, violent, and driven toward public recognition; Travis Bickle, played by De Niro, is no exception. Travis is a Vietnam-era vet who yearns to "be somebody" but only succeeds in becoming increasingly deranged and lonely as the film progresses. Scorsese's cinematography and the cast's skillful acting made Taxi Driver an enduring portrait of one of America's most disconcerting periods.
Set in New York City, Taxi Driver traces the daily habits of Travis as he drives his cab through the city, working long hours to avoid the monotony of his life. The film opens with shots of De Niro's eyes looking at the world from behind the glass windshield of his cab, calling to mind his isolation from society, which becomes magnified with time. Travis' life changes when he falls for a political campaign manager named Betsy, played by Cybill Sheperd. Betsy's rejection ofTravis instigates his obsession with guns and fixation with the idea of rescuing a teen-age prostitute he meets in his cab, played by Jodie Foster.
Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.Travis simultaneously destroys his body with drugs, alcohol, and junk food, and yearns to get himself into shape and to get his life organized. These two poles of his personality are best illustrated by an infamous scene in which Travis has a standoff with his mirror image. Travis looks at himself in the mirror and utters the most frequently quoted lines in the film: "You talking to me? You talking to me? You talking to me?… Well I'm the only one here." This scene enacts the construction, rehearsal, and performance of masculinity. In the privacy of his own room, Travis practices the role of the type of man he would like to be and calls to mind the anxiety embedded in the process of striving for this masculine ideal in the American post-Vietnam era.
The score for Taxi Driver was written by Alfred Hitchcock's composer, Bernard Herman, and completed the day before he died. While he collaborated with Hitchcock on many films, Herman is most famous for composing the soundtracks for Psycho and Vertigo. Like many of Hitchcock's films, Taxi Driver is a film about making movies. In a direct reference to Hitchcock, Scorsese appears in a shot at the beginning of the film. He later acts in a scene in which he and De Niro gaze at the silhouette of a woman through an apartment window (calling to mind Hitchcock's Rear Window). The cinematic spectator is continually addressed by shots of De Niro watching movies, films, projectors, the gazes of secret service men through photographic lenses, Travis' mirror, and the car window through which Travis experiences much of the world.
Director Martin Scorsese grew up in an Italian-American community in Little Italy. He entered a seminary after grammar school only to be asked to leave at the age of fourteen after falling in love with a girl. Scorsese attributes much of his cinematic fascination with issues of family loyalty, hierarchy, and spirituality to his early years in Catholic school. He made his first short film in high school and went on to study film at New York University. While most of Scorsese's earlier body of work deals with issues pertaining to Italian-American identity, later in life, he began to turn his camera away from Little Italy with films such as Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, The King of Comedy, After Hours, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Kundun. This is certainly not to say that Italian-American themes have not played a continual role in Scorsese's work. His 1990s films such as Goodfellas and Casino, and standards such as Raging Bull and Mean Streets point to his continuing interest in exploring stereotypes of Italian-Americans through mafia narratives.
Further Reading:
Lourdeaux, Lee. Italian and Irish Filmmakers in America: Ford, Capra, Coppola and Scorsese. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1990.
Odabashian, Barbara. "Double Vision: Scorsese and Hitchcock."Social and Political Change in Film and Literature. Edited by Richard Chapple. Gainesville, UP of Florida, 1994, 21-36.
Page, Ken. "Going Solo: Performance and Identity in New York, New York and Taxi Driver. " You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies and Men. Edited by Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumin. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1993, 137-43.
Tamburri, Anthony Julian, Paolo A. Giordano and Fred L. Gardaphé, editors. From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana. West Lafayette, Purdue University Press, 1991.
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