Taxi Driver (1976)

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver arrived in 1976 at a particular low-water mark for New York City, a place then genuinely beset by crime, poverty and civic collapse, and the film wears that atmosphere on every frame. Written by Paul Schrader and produced through the combined efforts of Italo/Judeo Productions, Bill/Phillips and Columbia Pictures, it is the kind of film that could only have been made in that specific window of American cinema when studios were, briefly, willing to hand serious money and serious latitude to directors with genuinely uncomfortable things to say. Running at 114 minutes, it doesn't waste a scene. Scorsese, who had already been building a reputation as one of the more restless and visually inventive directors of his generation (you can see some of that restlessness in his earlier work, including the personal documentary Italianamerican), here fully announced himself as a filmmaker capable of sustaining an entire world on screen, even when that world is almost entirely inside one man's crumbling head.

The film centres on Travis Bickle, an insomniac Vietnam veteran who takes a night-shift job driving a taxi through the streets of Manhattan and grows progressively more disconnected from the people around him. That premise, simple enough on paper, is transformed by the performances surrounding it. Robert De Niro, in the lead role, gives a performance that is at once physically precise and emotionally opaque, a combination that proved enormously influential on the decade that followed (his range in other, rather different projects is something I've touched on elsewhere, including The Untouchables). Jodie Foster, then only thirteen, plays Iris, a young street worker whose situation draws Travis's increasingly warped attention, and she handles material that would challenge most adult actors with striking assurance. Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel and Peter Boyle fill out a supporting cast that feels rooted in the grime and texture of the city rather than pasted on top of it. Bernard Herrmann, who died the night he completed the score, contributed one of his last and most distinctive pieces of work: a saxophone-heavy, melancholic arrangement that sits somewhere between jazz club and nightmare. Michael Chapman's cinematography leans into wet pavements, fluorescent lighting and slow zooms that make the city feel both enormous and suffocating. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and won it, a measure of how seriously European critics took American genre filmmaking at its best during this period. Scorsese would return to similarly uncomfortable urban and psychological territory in later films, among them The King of Comedy and Cape Fear, but Taxi Driver remains the film most closely associated with this strand of his work.

There’s no denying the technical mastery on display in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. It’s a film carved from shadow and neon, a fever dream of urban decay and isolation that pulses with paranoia and quiet rage. Robert De Niro delivers one of his most iconic performances as Travis Bickle, the insomniac Vietnam vet turned nocturnal cabbie, drifting through the rot of 1970s New York with hollow eyes and a growing sense of moral disgust. His descent is chillingly believable, rendered in small gestures like the way he stares into mirrors, mutters to himself, or obsessively cleans his arsenal. It’s acting of the highest order. The film is equally elevated by Bernard Herrmann’s smoky, jazz-tinged score, which wraps around the imagery like steam from a manhole cover, and by Michael Chapman’s gritty, voyeuristic cinematography. The direction is precise, the tension coiled tight beneath every interaction. Scenes of escalating confrontation (the infamous “You talkin’ to me?” monologue, the brutal finale) are executed with clinical intensity. As a piece of filmmaking, it’s undeniably powerful, a landmark of American cinema. And yet, for all its brilliance, Taxi Driver is deeply, profoundly uncomfortable, not because of its violence, but because of what it romanticises. Travis’s obsession with a young street worker, his relentless pursuit of her despite repeated rejections, and his self-appointed role as a saviour figure veer into deeply troubling territory. The film walks a razor-thin line between critique and complicity, and too often, it feels like it’s admiring its protagonist’s delusion rather than condemning it. I can appreciate the craft, the performance, the atmosphere, but I can’t shake the queasiness at its core. It’s a film I respect more than I can ever enjoy.

That tension between admiration and unease is one I keep coming back to whenever Taxi Driver comes up in conversation, and I suspect I'm not alone in it, even if plenty of people are reluctant to say so out loud. The craft is genuinely extraordinary and I wouldn't want to pretend otherwise, but craft in service of a vision that flatters its protagonist's delusions is a more complicated thing to sit with than a straightforwardly bad film. For me, the discomfort doesn't fade on repeat viewings, it sharpens. It's the kind of film that demands to be seen, and probably discussed at some length afterwards, but I wouldn't call an evening with it a comfortable one. Essential, perhaps. Easy, never.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 1976  | Watched: 2025-07-25

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Martin Scorsese: Italianamerican (1974) · The King of Comedy (1982) · Gangs of New York (2002) · Cape Fear (1991)
More with Robert De Niro: The Untouchables (1987) · The King of Comedy (1982) · Shark Tale (2004) · Little Fockers (2010)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)