He may have provoked the ire of insecure Marvel fans over the past couple of years, but there’s no denying that Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. He has helmed so many bona fide masterpieces – Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, etc. – that it’s impossible to name just one movie as his best work. But one that’s often ranked as Scorsese’s finest and most influential film is 1976’s Taxi Driver.
Nearly half a century later, Scorsese’s masterful psychological thriller is still just as intense and disturbing. From Robert De Niro’s captivating lead performance to Bernard Herrmann’s hypnotic score, these elements of Taxi Driver still hold up today.
Robert De Niro’s Disturbing Yet Human Performance As Travis Bickle
Robert De Niro gave one of his all-time finest performances in Taxi Driver. Travis Bickle is the quintessential antihero. He sets out with the best of intentions, but his vigilante crusade quickly chips away at his sanity.
The genius of De Niro’s performance is that he both connects to the audience with Travis’ humanity and keeps them at arm’s length with his shocking dark side.
It’s New Hollywood’s Take On The Vigilante Thriller
Vigilante thrillers dominated the American action cinema of the ‘70s, but they tended to be schlocky exploitation movies. Taxi Driver offered a gritty, subversive, and more artistically respectable New Hollywood counterpoint to these gnarly exploitationers.
With its experimental style and psychological themes, Taxi Driver really explores the consequences of vigilante justice (and just how disturbed a regular citizen would have to be to violently take the law into their own hands).
Bernard Herrmann’s Haunting Jazz Score
Scorsese usually licenses existing classics for his acclaimed soundtracks, but he opted for an original score when it came to Taxi Driver. He tapped legendary composer Bernard Herrmann – a regular collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense – to create the score.
Herrmann’s now-iconic jazz score for Taxi Driver pairs perfectly with Scorsese’s images of a seedy, smoggy, crime-ridden New York. Each track has a mesmerizing hypnotic rhythm.
Travis’ Post-War Trauma
Just a few months after the controversial war ended, Taxi Driver acknowledged that American veterans were returning from Vietnam psychologically scarred, only to be cast out by society (and the government that sent them to war in the first place) when they got home.
Scorsese’s sobering portrayal of Travis’ trauma and related mental health issues and insomnia is still just as poignant today. First Blood, Sylvester Stallone’s first outing as Rambo, explored similar themes a few years later.
Scorsese’s Portrait Of Loneliness
Travis returns to Vietnam with no friends outside his fellow cabbies, unable to forge a real connection with any other human beings, so he’s incredibly lonely throughout the movie. And while his violent outlets are unsettling, Travis’ isolation makes him universally relatable.
One of the movie’s most iconic scenes is Travis’ “You talkin’ to me?” monologue in the mirror. This scene perfectly exemplifies the toll that loneliness is taking on the character’s psyche.
Its Decidedly Unglamorous Depiction Of Violence
Many fans believe that critics who accuse Scorsese’s movies of being too violent completely miss the point. Scorsese makes very violent movies, but they don’t endorse it. If anything, they have the total opposite message.
Plenty of Hollywood action movies glamorize violence, but Scorsese’s uncompromising depiction of brutal acts and their tragic real-world consequences in movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas staunchly advocate against inflicting pain on others. This message is timeless and Scorsese most recently conveyed it in The Irishman.
Travis’ Compelling Voiceover Narration
One of the rules of screenwriting is “show, don’t tell.” Budding screenwriters are told to visualize as much of their story as possible, and that voiceover narration is a sign of a lazy script. But Scorsese has proven with Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street that the technique can be used brilliantly to expand on character.
Paul Schrader’s haunting dialogue and De Niro’s electrifying line readings combine to create one of the most memorable movie voiceovers of all time in Taxi Driver.
Michael Chapman’s Sentient Camera
Cinematographer Michael Chapman moves the camera in very interesting ways throughout Taxi Driver. When Travis futilely tries to call Betsy for a second date, Chapman takes the camera around the corner and down the hallway because the conversation is too awkward to endure.
After the final shootout, the camera rises up and looks down, as if to signify Travis’ soul leaving his body. Chapman’s seemingly sentient camera makes Taxi Driver a unique moviegoing experience.
The Desaturated Final Shootout
The final shootout in Taxi Driver is masterfully subversive and anticlimactic. Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, Travis quickly learns that he isn’t a very good shot and gets himself riddled with gunfire.
According to the BFI, Scorsese desaturated the colors in the sequence to appease the MPAA and score the movie a marketable rating, but it ended up tying into the movie’s unflattering portrait of violence and the culmination of Travis’ dark fantasies.
The Ambiguous Ending
The epilogue of Taxi Driver seems to wrap things up in a neat bow with a traditional Hollywood ending. Travis recovers from his injuries, he’s hailed as a hero as Iris is returned safely to her family, and he even gets another chance with Betsy. But, considering how bleak and gritty the rest of the movie is, this ending seems way too perfect not to take it with a pinch of salt.
All of Travis’ dreams supposedly come true right after he’s seen suffering several clearly fatal gunshot wounds. In the last shot of the movie, Travis does a shocked double-take in his rearview mirror. The ambiguity of this image has provoked decades of fan discussion. Has Travis finally found love, or is he being sent to hell?
