by The 70s were a time of crisis, and not only economically. The world was changing rapidly. Not much of the wealth of the 50s and 60s seemed to remain in America, less so in the big cities like New York. But harsh times also foster creativity. A fact that shows in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, which became one of the defining movies of its decade. And also one of the best films ever made. Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle, the Taxi Driver, has become one of the immortal icons of cinema history and pop culture for a multitude of reasons. When Arthur Fleck in Joker (2019) slowly turns into Batman’s nemesis, we’re instantly reminded of Travis Bickle. So strong is his influence on cinema even after 40 years. More than anything else, ambiguity and complexity ensures that Taxi Driver won’t lose any of its relevance in the foreseeable future.
To anyone familiar with the New York City of Friends or Sex and the City, the gentrified metropolis that reinvented itself during the 90s and gradually swapped chaos with cash, will inevitably stop and stare twice at what we’re presented with in Taxi Driver. The city looks like the best dystopian set ever imagined, only no set building was necessary to create it. This is New York the way it actually was at the height of economic downfall and garbage strikes. No movie-themed fast food places at Times Square but blue collar eateries. No polished 3D cinema but a nasty place where “couples” sit on untrustworthy velvet -colored satin and watch un-dubbed Swedish porn. Pimps hunting for either girls or customers, sleazy people selling drugs. And all that garbage and filth in the streets. In its own regard, it is exciting and beautiful, if only in retrospect and filtered through camera and screen. Is it any wonder Paul Schrader set his script in New York even though he was writing it in L.A. while out of a job and spending most of the day in his ex-girlfriend’s kitchen? What other place in the world could’ve epitomized the man Schrader conceived? A walking riddle like Travis Bickle would clearly look misplaced anywhere else other than buried in New York’s filth.
Paul Schrader made the transition from film critic to script writer by collaborating with his brother Leonard on The Yakuza. Directed by Sydney Pollack, the script was subject of a bidding war that, purportedly, earned the two brothers 100.000 dollars but stayed behind expectations. Not because The Yakuza is a bad film. It seems that Paul Schrader’s fascination with European cinema (especially the works of Robert Bresson) and Leonard Schrader’s a experience with Japanese culture (he lived there several years teaching English) led to a film that was too detached from American pop culture to appeal to audiences familiar with cowboys and gangsters and hard-boiled cops. That the western is steeped in Japanese culture under the surface, as much inspiration was taken from samurai films, those by Akira Kurosawa in particular such as Seven Samurai (1954), remade into The Magnificent Seven (1960), or Yojimbo(1961), remade into A Fistful of Dollars (1964), is beside the point. American audiences want American films. Paul Schrader seemed to understand this, drawing from his personal experience with the failed American Dream to come up with one of the strongest epitomes in cinema history. A man, driving a cab, a rolling metal coffin, through a New York night. A new notion of loneliness in the company of people, strangers that pay for a ride and nothing else, not separated from the Taxi Driver by a pane of glass but something more effective, more devastating. And while the Taxi Driver is part of the night, he perceives it filtered. It is a surreal view of this world, taken through the rearview mirror. There’s no truth in a reflected image, only the individual’s impressions. Finished within a week, the Taxi Driver took Paul Schrader for a spin. The result is a script seeping with freshness, so strong it takes its own momentum and pace, rewriting the rules all by itself.
It is self-evident a script so heavily focused on its protagonist calls for a strong actor. Robert DeNiro’s approach to acting, to fully devote himself to the character while shooting, comes to full bloom here. Scorsese knew him and Harvey Keitel, who plays the pimp Sport, from making Mean Streets in 1973. It almost seems that, not DeNiro is doing Travis Bickle justice but the other way round. When you compare Schrader’s script with the final cut, you realize it is all there, yet, as mentioned prior, takes its own momentum. DeNiro is responsible for that to a great extent. Travis Bickle is an enigma of a man and much about him is conveyed indirectly. When he seeks a job as a cabbie, he’s behaving strangely, as if uncomfortable in a situation that has someone else in charge. We learn that he served in Vietnam and was honorably discharge. This already hints at a potentially disturbed character. But then again, not everyone returned from the Vietnam War broken and disillusioned. Yet Travis looks just right in the role of a victim in a “Lost Generation” that, in retrospect, qualifies to this label more properly than those that won the Great War against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Imagine fighting a war with no evident purpose and to return to the ruins of New York City’s former glory. It gives a man a certain leeway in feeling lost, yet Travis is a different quality. Suffering from insomnia, he watches porn but to no avail. Riding around town on the bus or subway doesn’t do the trick either. Considering this, becoming a taxi driver clearly makes sense. Contrary to his statements, Travis is seeking the filth and the scum in the streets. He’s drawn to it. Because it gives him a feeling of superiority looking at other people’s misery and sins? This is hard to say. But behind the wheel of a yellow cab, he’s right in the filth he wants to see, if also in a bubble. His personal microcosm . Rolling through New York’s ugliest quarters and watching all those people through windows almost makes him equal to a zoo visitor. He’s there, if only indirectly. He’s the master of his yellow, rolling world. It’s exhibitionism and voyeurism at the same time, a hunt for the exotic and abnormal.
Why would a man whose behavior doesn’t distinguish him much from the people he derides yearn for the worst places in town when he’s so disgusted by it all? And it even seems that Travis isn’t actually from New York, so neither family nor sentimentality would connect him to the place. It becomes even more mysterious when he starts stalking Betsy (Sybille Shepherd) first, then actually manages to get her interested enough to date him. Betsy views him as a walking contradiction, a phraseology that explains a lot about Travis without answering many questions. His behavior is clearly orchestrated. What he does may appear random, yet never seems without purpose. But it should be noted that purpose is a complex term when dealing with a psychopath. That’s what Travis is. On the whole, his behavior is inexplicable, especially because, as Schrader stated himself, he’s always making sure to never reach his goals. Even though Betsy is a dream girl way out of his league, the Taxi Driver has the same appeal to her as the gun-wielding, tight-lipped cowboy of the 50s. It’s a phenomenon difficult to explain, one that makes her overlook he’s lacking so much to be good enough for her. Education. Wits. Status. Character? Well, Betsy has character, though it’s questionable whether it’s good character. In that regard, she’s another femme fatale that eventually turns out to be a disappointment. But Travis makes sure their relationship deteriorates quickly by taking her to see porn when inviting her to go out to the movies. Does eating apple pie with a slice of melted cheese explain this? Probably not. It’s because Travis has gotten used to losing so much he’s actually fostering it. He’s been told that he’s a loser so many times he’s playing his part. To a person of sound mind, this doesn’t add up. To Travis, it’s fuel to the monologue he’s talking over the film all the time to give us insight of his alienating mind. He’s forcing himself into the part of victim and loner. To justify the way he’s living, despite actively choosing that path.
May 10. Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the garbage and trash off the sidewalks. I’m working long hours now, six in the afternoon to six in the morning. Sometimes even eight in the morning, six days a week. Sometimes seven days a week. It’s a long hustle but it keeps me real busy. I can take in three, three fifty a week. Sometimes even more when I do it off the meter. All the animals come out at night – whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take ’em to Harlem. I don’t care. Don’t make no difference to me. It does to some. Some won’t even take spooks. Don’t make no difference to me.
From Travis Bickle’s diary, presented in voice overs throughout the film.
None of this would convey as effectively, had Taxi Driver been shot like the next film. Luckily, the film has one of the strongest visual languages ever put on screen. Through cinematography, a subtext is created that adds as much to the story as does the dialogue. Maybe even more. Much of the credit goes to Michael Chapman, who was in charge of the camera work. We see reflections of neon signs in a pool of water. We see a lot of the story happening through a mirror. Most notably, we see carnage through a top view. After Travis has executed his duty as “Cowboy in Dodge city”, the camera shows and retraces what happened through the ceiling, detached from the actual discourse, almost like a bystander it clearly is not. So much can be interpreted into shots like this. One of the best frames observes Travis at a phone in a hallway, front door open to a New York street, as he’s calling Betsy after she broke up with him. This shot draws a connection between Travis, the city and loneliness, but also the idea of idolizing a person that maybe looks like an angel but clearly is not. Only half of the dialogue is perceived with Travis in frame. Then the camera moves away, as if it (or we) couldn’t bear watching Travis fostering his own downfall anymore. Taxi Driver is full of shots like this, creating a strong visual symbolism that signifies different things, depending on reading and focus. Only few films accomplished this as effectively. And Bernard Hermann’s score only intensifies the effect. The score is, to be honest, hard to listen to without the visuals. Which is why it’s so great and effective. Music is composed as flipside to a coin. A slow-paced saxophone, playing as repetitively as the Cantina Band in Star Wars (1971) expresses Travis’ loneliness and hopelessness, the oddity of rolling through New York and watching people and events passing by without ever taking part but only commentating in disgust. Routine turns to boredom, to overthinking, to very negative thoughts. There is no doubt Hermann played a significant part in turning Taxi Driver into a classic with the last score he composed before his death.
When Travis forces things to deteriorate with Betsy, he’s making it worse, turning himself into a victim. But encountering Iris (Jody Foster) by chance gives him something else to craze about. Even though Iris seems older than her actual age from the way she talks, she looks and still is a girl. And you invariably wonder why Travis feels called, to “save” her instead of the next underaged runaway New York is crawling with. A helpless child forced into prostitution by her father figure, the pimp Sport, is hard to watch. Even more so when Iris is alone in a room with Sport, crying her heart out, and he puts on a show consoling her. Sport is a lot. Something between father figure, lover and pimp. Just another scumbag, selling drugs on the side, yet street smart and capable at pretending to be something else. To claim Sport is a product of circumstance is as much of a simplification as saying that Travis is a victim. Again, we find two characteristics in the two characters. Two epitomes of loneliness. Whereas Travis makes himself lonely to justify his failures and view of the world, Sport is lonely because he exploits people. Neither is capable of true love. Neither is a role model. Or even a good person. Taxi Driver expresses this pessimism concerning people. Iris, the innocent child, or in other words the future, is raped and misused simultaneously. In both occasions with best intentions in mind. But bear in mind that neither Travis nor Sport are of sound mind. And they’re both violent, if in different ways.
That Travis at first attempts to assassinate Senator Palantine after matching his looks with his thoughts, the man Betsy campaigned for and who he assumes to be her father figure despite a lack of evidence, clearly hints at his wish of becoming a martyr. Politicians are evil. Politicians sent young men to Vietnam to get slaughtered and lie about it! It fits Travis’ beliefs. The truth behind this scam is that he’s trying to hurt Betsy for what he made himself believe she did to him. Shooting her would be much too easy to Travis, who’s not a jealous lover. He’s not like the man he drives one night (played by director Martin Scorsese himself), that wants him to wait in front of his wife’s apartment, where she’s cheating on him with a different man and informs Travis of his intention to kill her without sparing any detail on what a 45. Magnum would do to her face. It is so very characteristic of Travis to filter all this and funnel it into a distorted knock-off until it feels like his own plan.
What plan, you might ask, seeing Travis race through the night, looking odd in his yellow cab with the extreme Mohawk, muscles trained tight again. Madman or martyr, what can be said for sure is that popping pills and having negative thoughts (a concept picked up in creating Arthur Fleck in the best film of 2019, Joker) is finally taking its toll. Loaded with more guns than necessary for an assassination, Travis seeks out Sport and his goons. Maybe to liberate Iris, but rather to go down fighting. Maybe for nothing, as he’s familiar with from Vietnam. Maybe for the glory the public denied him after returning from the war. To make up for being scrutinize and spat at after being drafted involuntarily into the Army. Whatever drives Travis leads to a massacre. He’s slaughtering those bad men. He makes them pay. That Iris’ father figure, despite all his wrongdoings, is shot as well, and that she begs him not to shoot her final client means nothing to Travis. Iris is saved, if only to replace one purgatory with another. She’s traumatized even more and yet Travis doesn’t accomplish what he wanted: to go down as martyr. Pressing his fingers in the shape of a gun against his temple when police officers storm the building, he utters: Peow! Strangely, Travis lives to see another day, one he probably never saw coming. The day he’s idolized by the media and turned into a hero. Nothing is farther from the truth, especially after he tried to assassinate Senator Palantine and chose “saving” Iris as plan B. Even Betsy is fooled to believe Travis has finally accomplished something. What is she other than a gold digger, going for a spin, trying to be near him again? But Travis is over her. He doesn’t need Betsy or any other girl. The question remains: what does Travis Bickle need? When Taxi Driver closes on him catching something in the mirror, jerking , expressing his paranoia, there’s only one thing that’s for certain: the madman is no martyr. And he isn’t cured either.
Taxi Driver is without doubt one of the greatest and most ambiguous films ever made. It is so subtle and complex that every generation may have its own reading of the story. But the story itself wouldn’t be as strong without this visual power that reflects New York City both as a real city on the verge of ruin and one of the driving characters of the film. Compared with other classics such as The French Connection (1975), you immediately understand what’s the cream and what’s the crop. Dialogue and acting, score and subtleness – this film has it all. No interpretation of Travis and how he acts could ever assume to be definite. This guarantees that Taxi Driver won’t see its importance diminishing, both as a testament to a rough period in New York’s and America’s history and as one of the most important and best films in cinema history.
