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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Taxi Driver

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Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle, Cybill Shepherd, and a young Jodie Foster. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. TheAmerican Film Institute ranked Taxi Driver as the 52nd greatest American film ever made on their AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list.
The film gained further notoriety when John Hinckley, Jr. claimed that it was his obsession with Foster's role that made him attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Plot

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a lonely and depressed young man and former Marine living inManhattan. He occasionally corresponds with his parents by mail, deceiving them into believing that he's living a healthy and successful life as a government employee. He refuses to send them his home address by telling them that it would interfere with the secrecy of his fabricated job. He becomes a night time taxi driver in order to cope with his chronic insomnia, working 12-hour shifts nearly every night, carrying passengers around all five boroughs of New York City. His restless days, meanwhile, are spent in seedy porn theaters. He keeps a diary, excerpts from which are occasionally narrated via voice-over during the film. Bickle claims to be anhonorably discharged Marine, and it is implied that he is a Vietnam veteran; he keeps a charredViet Cong flag in his squalid apartment and has a large scar on his back.
Bickle develops a romantic attachment to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer forNew York Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). Palantine is running for President on a platform of dramatic social change. After watching her from his taxi through the windows of Palantine's campaign office, Bickle enters the office asking to volunteer as a pretext to talk with Betsy. Bickle convinces her to join him for coffee and pie, and she later agrees to let him take her to a movie. She says he reminds her of a line in Kris Kristofferson's song "The Pilgrim, Chapter 33": "He's a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction–a walking contradiction." On their date, Bickle takes her to see Language of Love, a Swedish sex education film. Offended, she leaves the movie theater and takes a taxi home alone. The next day he tries to reconcile with Betsy, phoning her and sending her flowers, to no avail.
Bickle's thoughts begin to turn violent. The only person in whom he vaguely confides his new views and desires is fellow taxi driver "Wizard" (Peter Boyle), who tells Travis that he's seen all kinds in his time driving cabs, and he believes Travis will be fine. Disgusted by the petty street crime (especially prostitution) that he witnesses while driving through the city, he now finds a focus for his frustration and begins a program of intense physical training. He buys four guns from an illegal dealer, "Easy Andy" (Steven Prince). He then constructs a sleeve gunto attach on his right arm and practices concealing and drawing his weapons. He develops an interest in Senator Palantine's public appearances. One night, Bickle enters a run-down grocery just moments before a man attempts to rob the store. Bickle shoots the man in the neck. The grocery owner (Victor Argo) encourages Bickle to flee after he expresses worry for shooting the man with an unlicensed gun. As Bickle leaves, the store owner repeatedly clubs the near-dead man with a steel pole.
On another night, Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old child prostitute, enters Bickle's cab, attempting to escape her pimp, "Sport" (Harvey Keitel). When Bickle fails to drive away, Sport drags Iris from the cab and throws Bickle a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. Bickle later meets Iris in the street and pays her for her time, not to have sex, but to try and convince her to quit prostitution. They meet again the next day for breakfast and Bickle becomes obsessed with helping Iris leave Sport and return to her parents' home.
Bickle sends Iris several hundred dollars attached to a letter telling her he will soon be dead. After shaving his head into a Mohawk haircut, he attends a public rally where he attempts to assassinate Senator Palantine. Secret Service agents notice him approaching and Bickle flees. He returns to his apartment, then drives to the East Village, where he and Sport get into a confrontation in which the two insult each other. Bickle shoots Sport in the gut, then storms into the brothel and kills the bouncer. After the wounded Sport shoots Bickle in the neck, slightly wounding him, Bickle shoots him dead, as well as Iris' mafioso customer. Bickle is shot several times. Kneeling on the floor of Iris' room, he attempts several times to fire a bullet into his own head, but all his weapons are out of ammunition, so he resigns himself to resting on a sofa until police arrive.
The film's dénouement reveals Bickle recuperating. He has received a handwritten letter from Iris' parents who thank him for saving their daughter, and the media hail him as a hero. Bickle returns to his job, and encounters Betsy as a fare. She discusses his newfound fame, but he denies being a hero. He drops her off without charging her. As he drives away, he hears a small, piercing noise which prompts him to stare at an unseen object in his taxi's rearview mirror.

[edit]Cast

[edit]Production

According to Scorsese it was Brian De Palma who introduced him to Schrader. In Scorsese on Scorsese, edited by David Thompson and Ian Christie, the director talks about how much of the film arose from his feeling that movies are like dreams, or like taking dope and that he tried to induce the feeling of being almost awake. He calls Travis an “avenging angel” floating through the streets of New York City, which was meant to represent all cities. Scorsese calls attention to improvisation in Taxi Driver’s many scenes, such as in the scene between De Niro and Cybill Shepherd in the coffee-shop. The director also cites Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man and Jack Hazan’s A Bigger Splash as inspiration for his camerawork in the movie.[1]
In Scorsese on Scorsese the director mentions the religious symbology in the story comparing Bickle to a saint who wants to clean up both life and his mind. Bickle attempts suicide at the end of the movie as a way to mimic the Samurai’s “death with honour” principle.[1]
Shot during a New York summer heat wave and garbage strike, Taxi Driver came into conflict with the MPAA for its violence (Scorsese desaturated the color in the final shoot-out and got an R). To achieve the atmospheric scenes in Bickle's cab, the sound men would get in the trunk and Scorsese and his cinematographer, Michael Chapman, would squish themselves on the floor of the back seat and use available light to shoot.
In writing the script, Paul Schrader was inspired by the diaries of Arthur Bremer (who shot presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972) and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. However, the writer also used himself as an inspiration. Prior to writing the screenplay Schrader was in a lonely and alienated position, much like Bickle. Following a divorce and a break-up with a live-in girlfriend, he spent a few weeks living in his car. He wrote the script in under a month while staying in his former girlfriend's apartment while she was away.
Film critic Stephen Hunter's review of the film suggests that the assumption that Bickle is a Vietnam war veteran may not be accurate. Hunter points out how the character's military clothing and reaction to being around firearms seem incongruous for a combat veteran. Hunter's alternate theory is that Bickle may have been a loner who took up the veteran persona as part of his legion of personal/psychological problems. A scene early in the film includes Bickle explaining to the cab company personnel officer that he was honorably discharged from the Marines, though there is no clear paperwork in the scene or any clarification of that point in the screenplay. However, in the initial character description, Schrader writes that Bickle wears "a worn beige Army jacket with a patch reading, "King Kong Company 1968-70", though the dates may have simply given Bickle the information to create his identity.[2]
However, in an interview Schrader confirmed that he decided to make Bickle a Vietnam vet because the national trauma of the war seemed to blend perfectly with Bickle’s paranoid psychosis making his experiences after the war more intense and threatening. Thus, Bickle chooses to drive his taxi anywhere in the city as a way to feed his hate.[3]
While preparing for his role as Bickle, De Niro was filming Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 in Italy. According to Boyle, he would "finish shooting on a Friday in Rome...get on a plane...[and] fly to New York." De Niro obtained a cab driver's license, and when on break would pick up a cab and drive around New York for a couple of weeks, before returning to Rome to resume filming 1900. De Niro apparently lost 35 pounds and listened repeatedly to a taped reading of the diaries of Arthur Bremer. When he had time off from shooting 1900, De Niro visited an army base in Northern Italy and tape recorded soldiers from the Midwestern United States, whose accents he thought might be appropriate for Travis's character.
When Bickle determines to assassinate Senator Palantine, he cuts his hair into a Mohawk. This detail was suggested by actor Victor Magnotta, a friend of Scorsese's who had a small role as a Secret Service agent and who had served in Vietnam. Scorsese later noted, "Magnotta had talked about certain types of soldiers going into the jungle. They cut their hair in a certain way; looked like a Mohawk... and you knew that was a special situation, a commando kind of situation, and people gave them wide berths ... we thought it was a good idea."
Jodie Foster was far from being the first choice to play Iris. Scorsese considered other actresses to play that role, including Melanie Griffith,Linda Blair, Bo Derek and Carrie Fisher. A newcomer, Mariel Hemingway, auditioned for the role of Iris, but turned it down due to pressure from her family. After the other actresses turned down the role, Foster - an experienced child actor - was chosen by Scorsese.
In the original draft Schrader had written the role of Sport (Harvey Keitel) as a black man. There were also additions of other negative blackroles. Scorsese believed that this would give the film an overly racist subtext so they were changed to white roles, although the film implies that Travis himself is a racist. Among other things, cab drivers in the film refer to black people with various racial aspersions, the black neighborhood of Harlem is referred to as Mau Mau land, and Travis exchanges hostile eye-contact with several black characters. Schrader's original screenplay also set the action in Los Angeles; it was moved to New York City because taxis were much more prevalent there than in L.A. during the 1970s.

[edit]Music

Taxi Driver
Soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann
Released1998
GenreSoundtracks
LabelArista Records
Professional reviews
The music by Bernard Herrmann was his final score before his death on December 24, 1975, and the film is dedicated to his memory. Robert Barnett of MusicWeb International has said that it contrasts deep, sleazy noises representing the "scum" that Travis sees all over the city with the saxophone, a musical counterpart of Travis, creating a mellifluously disenchanted troubadour. Barnett also observes that the opposing noises in the soundtrack — gritty little harp figures — are as hard as shards of steel as well as a jazz drum-kit placing the drama in the city – indicative of loneliness while surrounded by people. Deep brass and woodwind are also evident. Barnett heard in the drumbeat a wild-eyed martial air charting the pressure on Bickle, who is increasingly oppressed by the corruption around him, and that the harp, drum and saxophone play extremely significant roles in all this music.[4]
The soundtrack for the film, released in 1998, includes notes by director Martin Scorsese, as well as full documentation for the tracks linking them in great detail to individual takes.
Track 12, "Diary of a Taxi Driver", features Herrmann's music with Robert de Niro's voiceover taken direct from the soundtrack.
Also featured in the film is Jackson Browne's "Late for the Sky", appearing in a scene where couples are dancing on the program American Bandstand to the song as Travis watches on his small TV.

[edit]Track listing

Some of the tracks feature relatively long titles, representative of the fact that similar reprises are heard in many scenes.
  1. Main Title
  2. Thank God for the Rain
  3. Cleaning the Cab
  4. I Still Can't Sleep/They Cannot Touch Her (Betsy's Theme)
  5. Phone Call/I Realise how much She is Like the Others/A Strange Customer/Watching Palantine on TV/You're Gonna Die in Hell/Betsy's Theme/Hitting the Girl
  6. The .44 Magnum is a Monster
  7. Getting into Shape/Listen you Screwheads/Gun Play/Dear Father & Mother/The Card/Soap Opera
  8. Sport and Iris
  9. The $20 Bill/Target Practice
  10. Assassination Attempt/After the Carnage
  11. A Reluctant Hero/Betsy/End Credits
  12. Diary of a Taxi Driver
  13. God's Lonely Man
  14. Theme from Taxi Driver
  15. I Work the Whole City
  16. Betsy in a White Dress
  17. The Days do not End
  18. Theme from Taxi Driver (reprise)

[edit]Controversies

The climactic shoot-out was intensely graphic.[5] To attain an "R" rating, Scorsese had the colors desaturated, making the brightly coloredblood less prominent.[6] In later interviews, Scorsese commented that he was actually pleased by the color change and he considered it an improvement over the originally filmed scene, which has been lost. However, in the special edition DVD, Michael Chapman, the film'scinematographer, regrets the decision and the fact that no print with the unmuted colors exists any more, as the originals had long-since deteriorated.
Some critics expressed concern over 13-year-old Jodie Foster's presence during the climactic shoot-out. However, Foster stated that she was present during the setup and staging of the special effects used during the scene; the entire process was explained and demonstrated for her, step by step. Rather than being upset or traumatized, Foster said, she was fascinated and entertained by the behind-the-scenes preparation that went into the scene. In addition, before being given the part, Foster was subjected to psychological testing to ensure that she would not be emotionally scarred by her role, in accordance with California Labor Board requirements.[7]

[edit]John Hinckley, Jr.

Taxi Driver formed part of the delusional fantasy of John Hinckley, Jr.[8][9] which triggered his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, an act for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.[10][11] Hinckley stated that his actions were an attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster, on whom Hinckley was fixated, by mimicking Travis's Mohawked appearance at the Palantine rally. His attorney concluded his defense by playing the movie for the jury.

[edit]Interpretations of the ending

Roger Ebert has written of the film's ending:
"There has been much discussion about the ending, in which we see newspaper clippings about Travis's 'heroism' of saving Iris, and then Betsy gets into his cab and seems to give him admiration instead of her earlier disgust. Is this a fantasy scene? Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true? ... I am not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence plays like music, not drama: It completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level. We end not on carnage but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorsese's characters."[12]
James Berardinelli, in his review of the film, argues against the dream or fantasy interpretation, stating:
"Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader append the perfect conclusion to Taxi Driver. Steeped in irony, the five-minute epilogue underscores the vagaries of fate. The media builds Bickle into a hero, when, had he been a little quicker drawing his gun against Senator Palantine, he would have been reviled as an assassin. As the film closes, the misanthrope has been embraced as the model citizen—someone who takes on pimps, drug dealers, and mobsters to save one little girl."[13]
On the Laserdisc audio commentary, Scorsese acknowledged several critics' interpretation on the film's ending being Bickle's dying dream. However, he admitted that the last scene of Bickle glancing at an unseen object implies that he might fall into rage and recklessness in the future, and he is like "a ticking time bomb."[14] Writer Paul Schrader confirms this in his commentary on the 30th anniversary DVD, stating that Travis "is not cured by the movie's end," and that, "he's not going to be a hero next time."[15]

[edit]Reception

Taxi Driver was a financial success earning $28,262,574 in the United States.[16] and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture (losing to Rocky) and received the Palme d'Or, at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.[17] It has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.[18] The film was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best films of all time.[19]
As of 2010, Rotten Tomatoes reported that 98% of critics gave positive reviews.[20]
The July/August 2009 issue of Film Comment polled several critics on the best films to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Taxi Driver placed first above films such as Il Gattopardo, Viridiana, Blow-Up, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, La Dolce Vita.[21]
In the American Film Institute's top 50 movie villains of all time, Bickle was named the 30th greatest film villain. Empire also ranked him 18th in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll.[22]

[edit]Legacy

Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, and The Walker make up a series referred to variously as the "Man in a Room" or "Night Worker" movies. Screenwriter Paul Schrader (who directed the other three films) has stated that he considers the central characters of the four films to be one character, who has changed as he has aged.[23][24]
Taxi Driver influenced the Charles Winkler film You Talkin' to Me?[25]

[edit]DVD versions

The first DVD released was in 1999 packaged as a single disc special edition release. It contained special features such as behind-the-scenes and several trailers including one for Taxi Driver.
In 2007, another 2-disc collector's edition was released. The first disc contained the movie itself plus two commentaries, one by Paul Schrader, the writer of the film and Professor Robert Kolker, and trailers. This edition retained some of the special features the earlier release had which were now accessible on the second disc.

[edit]Sequel

In late January 2005 a sequel was announced by Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese.[26] At a 25th anniversary screening of Raging Bull, De Niro talked about the story of an older Travis Bickle being in development. Also in 2000, De Niro mentioned interest in bringing back the character in conversation with Actors Studio host James Lipton.[27]
At the Berlinale 2010, De Niro, Scorsese, and Lars von Trier announced plans to work on the sequel, with a shoot planned for late 2010.[28]

[edit]American Film Institute recognition

American Film Institute recognition

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