Taxi Driver

By Simon Woodhouse

What makes a brilliant film brilliant? It's a million, no billion-dollar question, and there are almost as many answers. But a few simple things help, like good actors, a good script, a good director and a theme. Out of that list, I think it's the theme that's missing from a lot of less successful films. Taxi Driver's theme is visible in nearly every scene - loneliness. And loneliness is a perfect theme for creating sympathy, and it allows the audience to feel sorry for almost anyone, even the gun toting anti-hero.

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is God's lonely man. He's also a character with almost no past, and all we learn about him on the day he gets the job as a taxi driver, is he was once in the army. Travis is an insomniac, so working the nightshift suits him perfectly, but he still can't sleep when he's finished. He spends his waking hours in seedy porno theatres, but it's not a sexual thing, he just doesn't have anywhere else to go. De Niro provides an almost monotone voice over to many of Travis's scenes, a soundtrack that lends the character an extra layer of hopelessness. The film is already a gritty slice of big city reality, but seeing into Travis's head, hearing his thoughts, adds an extra layer of despair.

In between working the nightshift and wasting the daylight hours in sleazy fleapits, Travis starts to fixate on Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a beautiful young woman he watches as she's working in the campaign office of presidential candidate Senator Palatine (Leonard Harris). It's easy to see why Travis is fascinated with this girl - she's a pristine young woman, who carries herself with a confidence and grace that's missing from his world. Interspersed throughout the main plot are little scenes shot in Travis's cab, unrelated snippets that show how knife-edge and sordid the world of a cab driver can be. In one such scene the film's director Martin Scorsese, plays the role of an angry husband who's caught his wife cheating and is planning to shoot her. The irony here comes from the angry husband asking for advice from the almost psychotic cab driver.

As the story progresses Travis manages to get a date with Betsy, but screws it up and she totally rejects him. If he was on the edge before, he's right over the brink now. But he's not a bad man, he's just lonely and he desperately wants to be a part of something and helping someone. After failing with Betsy he crosses paths with Iris (Jodie Foster), a teenage prostitute. In his own hopeless way he wants to help this girl, however he's no idea how to reach out to her, a problem that dogs him throughout the whole film.

Though he only earns a taxi driver's wage, Travis has nothing to spend his money on and so when he decides he wants to buy a gun, he's able to get two or three. Following the rejection by Betsy, he starts to plan a means by which he can get her attention again. Having bought the guns he spends time in front of the mirror in this apartment, fantasizing about what he's going to do with them. This produces the film's most famous scene - 'You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?...' This snippet of dialogue has gone down in cinema history, but was in fact improvised by De Niro as the script only gave the actor a vague set of instructions.

Armed with the new guns hidden beneath his coat, Travis goes to one of Senator Palatine's campaign rallies. Here we see another of the film's iconic moments - Travis standing in his combat jacket with a Mohican haircut. After the campaign rally he's more disillusioned than ever, but still wants to make his mark on the world. The only other person who he feels anything for besides Betsy, is Iris. This leads to the films bloody climax, one where Travis lets his world-weariness manifest itself in a brief explosion of bullets. But even here it's difficult not to feel sorry for him. He wants to help Iris, but his methods aren't in step with what society expects even though they get results.

Very few films manage to attain both mainstream and cult followings, but Taxi Driver has fans in both camps. Though this is in a large part due to De Niro, all the supporting cast members also turn in top-notch performances. Cybill Shepherd is perfect in the role of Betsy, and she exudes confidence and style, but at the same time appears somewhat vulnerable. Though only fourteen years old when filming Taxi Driver, Jodie Foster was nonetheless nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar, and though she didn't win, her performance here hints at what was to come in her acting career. Two other notable names in the cast are Harvey Keitel as Sports, Iris's pimp, and Albert brooks who plays Tom, a co-worker of Betsy's. It's a testament the script and the directing that two such different characters can appear in the same film, and both stand out in their own right.

Taxi Driver may be Thirty years old now, but it's lost none of its impact. And though the realistic violence and grimy reality of the film might not be to everyone's taste, its examination of inner-city life, an existence in which it's easy to feel lonely, is spot on.