Taxi Driver - The Hollow-Eyed, Scary Guy on the Subway

Apr

17

Taxi Driver - The Hollow-Eyed, Scary Guy on the Subway

≡ Category: Drama, Essential, Movie Reviews By Country, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: Martin Scorcese
Year: 1976

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE

An intense aria about isolation and redemption in the squalid inner city, Taxi Driver was Martin Scorcese’s first bonafide masterpiece. It succeeds on every possible level, from the acting of Robert Deniro, Harvey Keitel, and Jodie Foster to the neon drenched cinematography of Michael Chapman to the woozily romantic score by Bernard Herrmann (his last) to the fever dream of a script by Paul Schrader, all tied together by maestro Martin Scorcese.

Deniro stars as Travis Bickle, an unstable war vet who drives a cab at night, obsessing about the decadence of New York City. He is so isolated and cut off that his attempts at social contact fail miserably. His loneliness and frustration lead him to consider an act of violence as a solution to his feelings of powerlessness. Will Travis become the next Lee Harvey Oswald?

A hundred years from now, people will watch Taxi Driver to see what New York City was like in the 70s. Scorcese captures the intensity, the gritty sleaze of the night dwellers of that city. When Travis visits a Times Square porno theater (all gone now), you can practically smell the funk and feel the floor sticking to your shoes. His conversations with his fellow cabbies have a brain damaged eloquence, a kind of street poetry to them. Martin Scorcese himself contributes a cameo as one of Travis’ fares, exhibiting the kind of tightly wound NYC manic energy which is all but extinct.

Jody Foster is utterly convincing as a teenage prostitute. Her scenes with Deniro are nervy and raw, retaining their bite thirty years later.

And Deniro? He was excellent two years earlier in The Godfather, Part II, but his performance in Taxi Driver is one for the ages. He personifies that hollow-eyed, scary guy you edge away from on the subway. He’s positively eerie.

Early in the picture, Travis Bickle prophesizes that “Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.” When that rain finally does come, the images will be seared into your brain forever.