Taxi Driver ***** (1976, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster) – Classic Movie Review 1387

Director Martin Scorsese’s 1976 ultra-realistic crime/vigilante thriller is both incredibly bleak and searing. It’s dazzlingly made by a hot and hungry Scorsese and spectacularly acted by its star Robert De Niro in one of his most iconic performances as the honourably discharged US Marine Travis Bickle. The Vietnam War veteran is a lonely, depressed and deranged insomniac, who takes to night-time taxi driving, guerrilla violence and eventually murder in New York City soon after the end of the Vietnam War.

De Niro’s performance is both mesmerising and grotesque, just like the one as Max Cady in Scorsese’s Cape Fear 15 years later. Jodie Foster gives the most sizzling performance as the 12-year-old pre-adolescent prostitute Iris ‘Easy’ Steensma, while Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle and Albert Brooks also star.

There are all sorts of other things to admire in Scorsese’s great Seventies movie, including especially Michael Chapman’s startling cinematography, Paul Schrader’s incisive screenplay and Bernard Herrmann’s thrilling music with its plaintive saxophone. It was the famous Hitchcock collaborator Herrmann’s final score before his death on 24 December 1975, and the film is dedicated to his memory. He died just hours after recording it.

Taxi Driver is all the more complex and disturbing for not making any obvious points or trying to score simple messages. This is a blood-stained, violent, chilling film that some viewers may prefer to turn away from. It established Scorsese as one of the top tiny handful of American directors.

Critics, film-makers and audiences alike regularly name Taxi Driver one of the greatest films of all time. Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor (De Niro), it won the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.

Scorsese has a director’s cameo as one of De Niro’s taxi clients.

The climactic shoot-out was considered graphic at the time. To get an R rating, Scorsese had the colours de-saturated, making the blood less bright. There was concern over 13-year-old Foster’s presence during the shoot-out but Foster said she was fascinated and entertained by the behind-the-scenes preparation that went into the scene.

Famously, Travis Bickle is looking into a mirror at himself, imagining a confrontation that would give him a chance to draw his gun. He says: ‘You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?’ They’ve become among the most quoted and imitated lines in cinema.

http://derekwinnert.com/cape-fear-1991-classic-film-review-177/

http://derekwinnert.com/bringing-out-the-dead-classic-film-review-701/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1387

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/