Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American neo-noir psychological drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. Set in a decaying New York City following the Vietnam War, it stars Robert De Niro as veteran Marine and taxi driver Travis Bickle, whose mental state deteriorates as he works nights in the city. The film also features Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Leonard Harris and Albert Brooks.
Filming began in summer 1975, with actors taking pay cuts to ensure that the project could be completed on its low budget of $1.9 million . For the score, Bernard Herrmann composed what would be his final score. The music was finished mere hours before his death, and the film is dedicated to him.
Theatrically released by Columbia Pictures on February 8, 1976, the film was critically and commercially successful despite generating controversy for both its graphic violence in the film's climax, and for the casting of 12-year-old Foster as a child prostitute. The film received numerous accolades, including the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and four nominations at the 49th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress.
Although Taxi Driver generated further controversy for inspiring John Hinckley Jr.'s attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, the film has remained popular. According to STRAND Magazine, it is considered one of the greatest films ever made, and one of the most culturally significant and inspirational of its time. In 2022, Sight & Sound named it the 29th-best film ever in its decennial critics' poll, and the 12th-greatest film of all time on its directors' poll, tied with Barry Lyndon. In 1994, the film was designated as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically" significant by the U.S. Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Plot
In New York City, Vietnam War veteran Travis Bickle takes a job as a night-shift taxi driver to cope with his chronic insomnia and loneliness, frequently visiting adult movie theaters and keeping a diary in which he consciously attempts to include aphorisms such as "you're only as healthy as you feel". He becomes disgusted with the crime and urban decay that he witnesses in the city and dreams about getting "the scum off the streets".Travis becomes infatuated with Betsy, a campaign worker for Senator and presidential candidate Charles Palantine. Travis enters the campaign office where she works and asks her to join him for coffee, to which she agrees. Betsy agrees to go on a second date with him, during which he takes her to an adult movie theater, which she leaves immediately. He attempts to reconcile with her, but fails. Enraged, he storms into the campaign office where she works and berates her before being kicked out of the office.
Experiencing an existential crisis and seeing various acts of prostitution throughout the city, Travis confides in a fellow taxi driver, nicknamed Wizard, about his violent thoughts. However, Wizard dismisses them and assures him that he will be fine. To find an outlet for his rage, Travis follows an intense physical training regimen. He gets in contact with black market gun dealer Easy Andy and buys four handguns. At home, Travis practices drawing his weapons, going as far as creating a quick-draw firearm hidden in his sleeve. He begins attending Palantine's rallies to scope out his security. One night, Travis shoots a man attempting to rob a convenience store run by his friend, leaving before the cops arrive as the convenience store owner proceeds to beat the non responsive robber.
In his trips around the city, Travis regularly encounters Iris, a 12-year-old child prostitute. Tricking her pimp and abusive lover Sport into thinking that he wants to solicit her, Travis meets with her in private and tries to persuade her to stop prostituting herself.
Travis shaves his hair into a mohawk and attends a public rally where he plans to assassinate Palantine. However, Secret Service agents see Travis putting his hand inside his jacket and approach him, which escalates to a chase. Travis escapes pursuit and makes it home undetected.
That evening, Travis drives to the brothel where Iris works to kill Sport. He enters the building and shoots Sport and one of Iris's clients, a mafioso. Travis is shot several times but manages to kill the two men. He fights with the bouncer, whom he manages to stab through the hand with his knife and kill with a gunshot to the head. Travis attempts to die by suicide, but has no bullets. Severely injured, he slumps on a couch next to a sobbing Iris. As the police respond to the scene, a delirious Travis mimics shooting himself in the head with his bloody finger.
Travis goes into a coma due to his injuries, but he is hailed by the press as a heroic vigilante and not prosecuted for the murders. He receives a letter from Iris's parents in Pittsburgh, who thank him and reveal that she is safe and attending school.
After recovering, Travis returns to work, where he encounters Betsy as a fare. Betsy tells him that she followed his story in the newspapers. Travis drops her off at her home but declines to take her money, driving off with a smile. He becomes agitated after noticing something in his rearview mirror, but continues driving into the night.
Cast
Director Martin Scorsese plays a cameo role: once in the background during Betsy's first appearance, and later as an unhinged passenger in Travis' car who intends to murder his unfaithful wife. Diahnne Abbott, who would go on to become De Niro's wife in real life, plays an adult movie theater concession girl who rebuffs Travis' flirtatious advances.Production
Development
has stated that it was Brian De Palma who introduced him to Paul Schrader, and Taxi Driver arose from Scorsese's feeling that movies are like dreams or drug-induced reveries. He attempted to evoke within the viewer the feeling of being in a limbo state between sleeping and waking.Scorsese cites Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man and Jack Hazan's A Bigger Splash as inspirations for his camerawork in the movie.
Scorsese also noted that Jef Costello, portrayed by Alain Delon in Le Samouraï, inspired the creation of Travis Bickle. The role was, in fact, offered to Alain Delon, among many others.
Before Scorsese was hired, John Milius and Irvin Kershner were considered to helm the project. When writing the script, Schrader drew inspiration from the diaries of Arthur Bremer, as well as the Harry Chapin song "Taxi", which is about an old girlfriend getting into a taxi. For the ending of the story, in which Bickle becomes a media hero, Schrader was inspired by Sara Jane Moore's attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford, which resulted in her being on the cover of Newsweek.
Schrader also used himself as inspiration. In a 1981 interview with Tom Snyder on The Tomorrow Show, he related his experience of living in New York City while battling chronic insomnia, which led him to frequent pornographic bookstores and theaters because they remained open all night. Following a divorce and a breakup with a live-in girlfriend, he spent a few weeks living in his car.
After visiting a hospital for a stomach ulcer, Schrader wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver in "under a fortnight". He stated, "The first draft was maybe 60 pages, and I started the next draft immediately, and it took less than two weeks." Schrader recalled, "I realized I hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks that was when the metaphor of the taxi occurred to me. That is what I was: this person in an iron box, a coffin, floating around the city, but seemingly alone."
Schrader 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. Two drafts were written in ten days. Pickpocket, a film by the French director Robert Bresson, was also cited as an influence.
In Scorsese on Scorsese, Scorsese mentions the religious symbolism in the story, comparing Bickle to a saint who wants to cleanse or purge both his mind and his body of weakness. Bickle attempts to kill himself near the end of the movie as a tribute to the samurai's "death with honor" principle.
Dustin Hoffman was offered the role of Travis Bickle but turned it down because he thought that Scorsese was "crazy". Al Pacino, Jason Miller, Jeff Bridges were also considered for Travis Bickle.
Pre-production
While preparing for his role as Bickle, Robert 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... fly to New York". De Niro obtained a taxi driver's license and, when on break, would pick up a taxi and drive around New York for a couple of weeks before returning to Rome to resume filming 1900.Although De Niro had already starred in The Godfather Part II, he was recognized only one time while driving a cab in New York City. De Niro apparently lost 35 pounds and was repeatedly listening to a taped reading of the diaries of criminal Arthur Bremer. When he had free time while 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.
Scorsese brought in the film title designer Dan Perri to design the title sequence for Taxi Driver. Perri had been Scorsese's original choice to design the titles for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore in 1974, but Warner Bros. would not allow him to hire an unknown designer. By the time when Taxi Driver was going into production, Perri had established his reputation with his work on The Exorcist, and Scorsese was now able to hire him.
Perri created the opening titles for Taxi Driver using second unit footage that he color-treated through a process of film copying and slit-scan, resulting in a highly stylized graphic sequence that evoked the "underbelly" of New York City through lurid colors, glowing neon signs, distorted nocturnal images, and deep black levels. Perri went on to design the opening titles for a number of major films, including Star Wars and Raging Bull.