Review of Taxi Driver (1954) by Stuart K — 05 Sep 2012

After Mean Streets (1973) and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Martin Scorsese pitched this project to Oscar-winning producers Michael and Julia Phillips (The Sting (1973)), it was a dark and brooding script by Paul Schrader, but it would be one of Scorsese's most iconic and darkest films.

He was fueled by cocaine at the time of making it, the angst of post-Vietnam America was at boiling point, it was the right film, in the right place, at the right time. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is an ex-Marine, not long back from Vietnam, who is lonely and trawls Manhattan, riddled with insomnia.

He gets a job as a taxi driver, and drives the streets at night picking up all kinds of seedy customers. He becomes romantically involved with campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who works for Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), but the relationship doesn't last after Travis takes her to see a sex film.

When he see's 12-year-old child prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster) trying to escape the clutches of her abusive pimp Matthew (Harvey Keitel), Travis wants to help her, and it becomes an obsession. It's a dark and dirty film, but it caught the attention and imagination of the film-going public at the time, and De Niro gives an icon performance as the sad loner, who isn't a bad person, but is screwed up by Vietnam.

Scorsese shows a dangerous, exotic side to the mean streets of New York, and it's filmed brilliantly, and is terrifying as well. There are people like Travis Bickle everywhere.