Film: Taxi Driver (1976)
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 film that is, as the title suggests, about a taxi driver. The film follows Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a 26-year-old ex-marine that takes on a night time job driving taxis due to having trouble sleeping.
The opening scene shows an extreme close up of Travis’ eyes darting from side to side, with quick cuts to long shots showing different streets of New York from inside his cab. An interesting extract to look at is Scorsese talking about making this film in Scorsese on Scorsese: Much of Taxi Driver arose from my feeling that movies are really a kind of dream-state, or like taking dope. And the shock of walking out of the theatre into broad daylight can be terrifying. […] The film was like that for me – that sense of being almost awake. (54) This is interesting when discussing Taxi Driver, as this dream-like state is certainly achieved through shallow focus, which is used in the opening scene and throughout the rest of the film. What results from this technique is firstly the encapsulation of Travis in his cab and secondly the blurring of the city. The shots of the city being blurred whilst Travis remains in focus and foregrounded make the connotation of the city being the enemy, evident in the quick cuts matching his eye movements, which make it seem like New York is attacking Travis from all sides.
Following this idea of a dream-like and fragmented city, AlSayyad wrote in cinematic urbanism about the lack of spatial clarity in Taxi Driver and in particular Travis’ apartment, citing the way Scorsese uses frames within frames to create a trapped effect (185). Whilst these frames within frames work well to create a prison like feel to Travis’ life with his taxi, apartment and furthermore the shooting range, what is also interesting is how Scorsese constructs the scenes when Travis is preparing to assassinate Charles Palentine (Leonard Harris). What the viewer hears is the sound of a clock ticking throughout and what they see is a set of shots tracking with Travis while he works out and as he constructs a machine attached to him to hold his guns. This machine like aspect to Travis’ character is noteworthy as it could be argued that it is a reaction to the city itself. Throughout the film we see repetitiveness of things like his meter and also a tracking shot of traffic lights which gets repeated a few times in quick succession. This is then matched with Travis’ diary entries where he says that “one day is indistinguishable from the next” and also the repetitiveness of the score whenever Travis is in the cab, all these serve to create a city that is mechanised and repetitive.
Returning to the opening scene another key aspect revealed in the opening shots is the colour of red. When the viewer sees these blurred shots of New York what is visible is the neon red lights of the lower class areas, which becomes a recurring theme whenever Travis travels at night, whether that’s a close up of a red traffic light or a medium shot outside the café where Travis talks with other drivers, red is always prevalent. Whilst it could be suggested that this could connote violence and romance (the film contains a bit of both) what’s worth considering is Scorseses strong catholic background. In Taxi Driver Amy Taubin wrote that “Scorsese describes Travis’s perambulations of the Times Square red light district as ‘putting himself in the occasion of sin’”. What could be suggested here then is that the red connotes not just violence but hell itself with the city.
Exploring this theme of Catholicism further, the mise-en-scene aspect of costume is an important thing to note also. Whilst Iris (Jodie Foster) (a 12-year-old prostitute who Travis saves) is clearly not a virgin, she is certainly portrayed as one in this city of ‘filth’ and ‘scum’. This is done through codes of colour, with white being assigned to her at important points during the film, such as during the shooting and when Travis sees her for the second time, wearing a wide brimmed white hat. Whilst this may not be intentional it is further confirmed by Scorseses lighting and framing choices for Iris. When the viewer first sees the whorehouse where she works what the viewer first sees is a long shot showing trash and griminess and then an upwards tilt shows the rest of the house, revealing even more. Then when Iris’ room is shown, whilst it is undoubtedly lit red (connoting hell again) Iris is exclusively framed with natural lighting through the window, which also recurs when she is dancing with her pimp Matthew (Harvey Keitel), thus cementing this virginal aspect of her character.
When looking at Scorseses hell-like New York in Taxi Driver what becomes increasingly apparent is the binary opposition of mobility and entrapment from the outset. Whilst this is evident in the cab, with Travis’ job a mobile one and yet traps him, Nezar AlSayyad when comparing Taxi Driver and Annie Hall, said this of Scorseses New York:
The architecture of the streetscape seems like the skeleton of a dead city; it is an ‘urban void’, a black hole without vibrancy or purpose. Yet even if Travis is angered by such a city, being a product of a specific urban class he remains seduced by its promise, and a prisoner of its reality. (186)
What becomes evident when looking at this extract then is also how the class of characters can shape their city and views of it. Travis living a lower class life in a small squalid apartment, all the while working night shifts and driving in lower class areas, creates this ‘urban void’ and a quicker path to insanity for himself which is further proven with the fact that we never see an extreme long shot establishing the city from up high, for the majority only street level shots are seen.
Lastly an important thing to analyse is Travis’ racism. Amy Taubin wrote,
It’s more to the point to think of Taxi Driver as an attempt to reclaim – for the embattled white male – the urban landscape that had been revitalised by the Blaxploitation films of the early 70s. In that sense, Schrader and Scorsese’s project mirrors, however unconsciously, Travis’s desire to clean the scum off the streets. (15,16)
Travis’ racism is evident throughout the film, for example, in the latter part of the film, when a black man attempts to rob a shop Travis shoots and kills him and then what the viewer sees is a long shot of Travis standing over the man with an inhumane expression on his face. This is a problematic theme of Taxi Driver as in the lower class areas or the ‘hell’ parts of the city that Scorsese portrays with red, smoke and darkness constantly present, black people are prominent and it’s fair to say that since the viewer sees the film for the majority from a subjective viewpoint of Travis it positions the viewer to feel a sense of sympathy towards him.
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