Directed by Martin Scorsese
Screenplay by Paul Schrader
Cinematography by Michael Chapman
Art Direction by Charles Rosen
Costumes by Ruth Morley
Music by Bernard Herrmann
Edited by Marcia Lucas, Tom Rolf, and Melvin Shapiro
Produced by Michael Philips and Julia Philips
Starring
Leonard Harris as Senator Charles Palantine
Albert Brooks as Tom
Cybil Shepherd as Betsy
Richard Higgs as Secret Service Agent
Victor Argo as Store Owner
Joe Spinell as Personnel Maniac
Peter Boyle as Wizard
Norman Matlock as Charlie T.
Harry Northup as Doughboy
Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle
Steven Prince as Gun Dealer
Martin Scorsese as Loiterer/Murderous Passenger
Gene Palma as Drummer
Harvey Keitel as Sport
Jodie Foster as Iris
. . .
"I believe that someone should become a person like other people."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
In New York City, everybody rides in cabs. Senators. Homeless people. Investment bankers. Sex workers. Broadway actors. Sick junkies. Mafia assassins. Lonely grandmothers. Pimps. Drug dealers. Arms merchants. Public school teachers. Civil rights attorneys. Serial killers. Charles Bronson. People who talk to themselves. People who love to chat up the cabbie. Swingers. Wife-swappers. Catholic priests. Street artists. Musicians. Journalists. Novelists. Other cabbies have to catch cabs. Filmmakers. Foreign tourists. College students. Studio art majors. Restaurant servers. Drunken sailors. Scientists. Poets. Defense intellectuals. Anti-nuke activists. Community organizers. Veterans. Peace activists. Housepainters. Civil engineers. Martial arts instructors. Everybody has to catch a cab at some point. You ever try driving in city traffic? Best leave it to the professionals. And because a vast spectrum of humanity passes through a taxi, why not tell a story from the point-of-view of someone driving the taxi? What do they see? How do they feel? What goes through their mind? It all depends on the cabbie.
—
A guy named Travis Bickle shows up in New York City to drive a cab. Surely, he's making his own choices. Okay, maybe he didn't know from the start that he was going to hack it, but that's where he lands. He's speedy, y'know, so he can crunch pills, drive triple shifts, cut the crash with sips of bourbon, he'll make money-maybe have a heart attack-but he'll make money. We might make the mistake-a mistake Bickle lives inside of-that Travis is a man without a past. He's not. But he lives within that fundamental mistake all the same. I don't blame someone for making such a mistake. Sometimes your past is a burden, or it can really feel like one. Bickle was a Marine, some kind of Special Forces operator in Vietnam. Maybe he killed people. Maybe people tried to kill him. Yeah, maybe you would want to get away from all that. But it could actually be the case that Bickle isn't a soldier at all. Maybe he's a case of stolen valor. He's one of these guys that needs to play army dress-up or whatever. Taxi Driver is that kind of movie. Travis Bickle is that kind of protagonist. You just don't know if he's telling you the whole truth or not. Bickle latches on to different strands of thought, focuses on willing certain people into becoming what he needs them to be even if they cannot be that, or don't want to be that, or just find him kinda gross and creepy. He's a man of shreds and patches. I think he's telling it like he sees it . . . but does he actually see it? By it I guess I'm talking about reality. Bickle sees what he wants, and Reality is not necessarily what he wants. Perhaps we sympathize up to a point.
—
Bickle narrates the movie in fits and starts. He's a guy who keeps a diary. He sits in his tiny apartment, deck of cards for solitaire near-to-hand, surrounded by fast food boxes and wrappers and crushed soda and beer cans, and we get his interior monologue about his thoughts and impressions. Bickle's full of racist paranoia and homophobia and misogyny and fantasies of victimhood and fantasies of a Biblical flood destroying New York City for its sins and corny little self-help sayings. Bickle crunches speed, sips bourbon, slams beers, and jerks off in porno theaters. Yet, Bickle sees himself as an avatar of purity, health, righteous vengeance. Bickle's attempting to introspect himself out of his bad feelings-to introspect himself out of himself and into the role of some heroic destroyer. But this seems to be a trap, since he can't take in new information or other viewpoints. Bickle's stuck inside his own rage, his own fantasies, and his inability to see himself how others see him. Which is as a manipulative creep, a walking timebomb, and a pervert haunting porno theaters with his dick in his hand.
—
In a key scene, Bickle goes to an indoor firing range to brush up his sidearm shooting. Bickle noticeably blinks as he fires. Is he out of practice? Was he never in the Marines to begin with? We just have Bickle's word to go on about his past and that King Kong Unit patch on his jacket's shoulder. But maybe Bickle just put on this whole persona as a costume. Bickle puts on other personas-nice dating guy; dude looking for a job; vigilante killing machine; guy interested in politics; dutiful son-and who can say if any of 'em are the For Real Bickle. He's not really good at any of 'em, either. Well, he hacks real good. Gotta give him that. The title of the film fits.
—
In another key scene, Bickle takes a woman named Betsy on a date to a porno theater. Betsy's a volunteer for a Senator Charles Palantine, who wishes to be President of the United States of America. Betsy has, presumably, never been inside a porno theater in her life. She's beautiful and smart and, somehow, she gives Bickle a chance. I've always thought it was out of a combination of boredom and morbid curiosity. There's no way in hell she's actually sold on Bickle's twitchy, desperate pitter-patter. Betsy tells him he reminds her of some Kris Kristofferson lyrics. I think what she's saying is that she thinks Bickle is like a fictional character-dramatic, contradictory-and this is in contrast to her upright socially conscious co-workers who are so sober, so certain, so adult, so predictable. But, when she actually sits down in the porno theater next to Bickle . . . nope. She has to get the fuck outta there. Fiction is fun on the page and on the screen, but not so much in real life. Can't say as I blame her.
—
New York City is a grimy, violent, exciting, desperate place in Taxi Driver. We are looking at the complex results of social injustice, economic inequality, and the implosion of the Myth of Noble-ass American Exceptionalism. Post-Nixon. Post-Vietnam. You can still see the history. Pre-Giuliani. Pre-Disney. But you can also see sick junkies nodding in doorways; child prostitutes getting pimped; angry dudes yelling incoherently as they stalk the summer nights; people randomly beating the shit out of each other for no discernible reason; juvenile delinquents vandalizing property; garbage everywhere; people fucking in public; and Bickle tries to apply his white man's rage fantasy of annihilation to a city that will remain forever beyond his comprehension. Betsy-a little willfully, a little desperately-sees him as a walking contradiction-the city, too, is a contradictory entity, far more so than Bickle, far beyond the vacuous campaign slogans of the Palantine operation. At least the Palantine operation's trying to build something, y'know? It's something.
—
Bickle fails at winning Betsy's heart, so he tries to save the soul of a child prostitute named Iris. Iris and Bickle's conversation is bleak and hilarious. Bickle does a kind of 'Scared Straight' pitch, and Iris yammers on about astrology. Bickle lies about being a government agent. Iris fantasizes about escaping to some grody hippie commune. Bickle-who loves jacking speed, buying illegal handguns, and watching porno movies full of orgies and gang bangs-takes on the role of Wholesome Big Brother with Iris, and maybe he half sells it. Bickle's speaking with a child, after all. Children aren't stupid, but they can be trusting to a fault. Bickle almost gives away the game when he half admits to reading about commune life in a dirty magazine. Oh, that dear, dear taxi driver!
—
When Bickle applies in-person to become a cabbie, he's gruffly interviewed by a fellow former Marine played by actor Joe Spinell. The Spinell character tries to suss out if Bickle is some kind of combat stress walking wounded type, but he relents after a bit. There's a moment where they try to relate one Marine to another, but Bickle shines him on, and the Spinell character doesn't push it. Hey, he's not a psychiatrist. Lots of weirdo fuckers hack. New York City is a mecca for crazies, right? Spinell would later play a serial killer with an intermittent ability to pass for normal in the 1980 William Lustig flick Maniac, which I have long thought of as a secret sequel to Taxi Driver. Fuck Marvel. Fuck DC. Fuck Harry Potter. Fuck Star Trek and Star Wars. Give me the Taxi Driver Cinematic Universe. In addition to Maniac, I would include Blue Collar, Saturday Night Fever, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Bad Lieutenant, Bullet Ballet, and Summer of Sam. Because I don't need anymore Feel Good in my movies ever again.
—
Because Bickle is a sort of fictional construct, the violent climax doesn't totally consume him. Bickle's mayhem gets twisted into a Wild West in Noo Yawk fantasy by a media looking to pander to white America's bloodthirsty vigilante dream life. Bickle's version of Death Wish-unlike Charlie Bronson's-doesn't end with a man in exile, but with the hack readmitted into the community of citizens in good standing. Someone's gotta drive the cab, I guess. It's the most fucked-up happy ending of them all.
