Taxi Driver is a film about many things, but overall it is about the theme of isolation and focuses on one particular loner in a big city who can be construed as an anti-hero. It is a film that draws from many genres: the Western, horror, film noir, and was also influenced by the films of the Italians (DeSica, Rosselini, Fellini).
Discuss cinematically, in at least two paragraphs, the themes of isolation and/or the anti-hero and how Scorsese's film is influenced by the different genres and by the Italians. You might find Ebert's original review and his Great Movies essay on the film helpful.
Part 1 of 2
ReplyDeleteScorsese's Taxi Driver combines his love of cinema and love the New York City into a high powered film centered around the troubled character of Travis Bickle. The two cinematic elements I will discuss in relation to where Scorsese learned them from is lighting in relation to the horror genre and presentation of setting in relation to filmmakers such as De Sica and Rossellini. In Taxi Driver, Scorsese utilizes light in the form of shadows and colors in a similar way that horror films of the early 70s utilized them. Released in 1976, Taxi Driver came out right in the middle of this horror heyday that was happening in Hollywood. Films such as the Exorcist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre are prime examples of popular horror films that were released in the years prior to Taxi Driver. These films among others released in the era continued the generic precedents set by German Expressionist films like Nosferatu in the 1920s, having shadows be essential to the portrayal of danger and fear. Along with fear, these films now had the color that German Expressionists did not really have access to in their period. For 1970s horror filmmakers such as William Friedkin and John Carpenter, including hues of blue, red, and green in their films in the lighting of their characters added to erie, evil, and intense moods of the films. In Taxi Driver, Scorsese uses color and shadows in a very similar way as these 1970s horror filmmakers. One scene in which uses these lighting techniques is actually one that he makes a cameo in. It is the scene in which Scorsese plays one of Travis’s late night fares. In short, Scorsese’s character serves the purpose of introducing Travis to the possibility of dealing with issues in his life with harsh acts of violence. This idea, the decision to act upon evil thoughts, is in the end what threatens Travis the most. During the scene, both Travis and the rider are shown at medium close ups, with shadows thrown across their faces. These shadows represent the dark nature of both of these characters’ psyches; the dark thoughts that fill their heads and overtake their personas at times are shown on the outside. Along with the shadows, the lights coming from behind the cab and thus backlighting the characters as they talk is green, a color often associated with evil and greed. In Taxi Driver, this usage of green represents the enticing nature of violent acts, and taking justice upon oneself. This scene is one that includes a turning point in Travis’s approach to life, and the green color certainly furthers its effect.
Part 2 of 2
ReplyDeleteJust as he reflects the style of 1970s horror through his lighting techniques in Taxi Driver, Scorsese harkens back to italian Neo-realism for how he approaches portraying crime ridden New York City. In the 1940s following the end of WWII, Italy was war torn; a wreck in every city. This led for the Italian Neo-realism movement personified by the styles of directors Rossellini and DeSica. Cities and the people that inhabited them were portrayed as what they were: rough and broken down. In De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, Rome is presented to the audience as a center of crime and a group of citizens grabbing at the bottom of the barrel, standing on their last legs. The film features many long shots of city action, along with long takes that rest on the actions of the desperate in Rome. Nearly 30 years later and across the Atlantic, Scorsese had a similar feeling he wished to portray in Taxi Driver. Key to telling the story us Travis Bickle was trying to get viewers to see New York City in the same way that he did: a city filled with “the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit” in need of repair. Similar to the disrepair of 1940s Italy in some ways, 1970s New York City was a town that was indeed crime ridden. Scorsese uses shots looking out of Travis’s taxi in a similar way that De Sica used long tracking shots to cover New York City’s grime and filth. By showing the audience the truth and evidence that surrounds Travis so often, it is easier to understand the characters actions and the film as a whole.
Isolation and anti heros are commonly focused on in film, especially during the 1970s in the US where drugs and gang violence were very prevalent. Taxi Driver came out in 1976, one of Martin Scorsese's first breakout films, and was immediately regarded as one of his best and most famous films. What is an anti-hero? By definition it is an unconventional hero. In film when I think of an Anti Hero I think, besides Travis Bickle, I think Zampano from La Strada. Travis Bickle, taxi driver in New York City, is defined by more than just his profession. He is a war veteran who drives New York’s streets at night, exploring a city where he lives, but doesn’t belong. Travis is truly a loner, surrounded by millions but not truly a part of anyone else’s life. Not only that, but Travis is an anti-hero, a man who has heroic characteristics but does not follow the moral guidelines of a film’s traditional hero. This iconic film draws influence from popular Westerns, horror, film noir, and the Italian films, especially Italian neo realism. New York itself helps perpetuate this idea of isolation, and the focus on the city is reminiscent of Fellini. Bickle drives around in a cab, a car that every New Yorker uses, but doesn’t make a lasting connection with any of the people who surround him. Even when he talks to people, it seems like as soon as the conversation ends the people forget about him. This everyday setting is reminiscent of the neorealist ways of Scorsese. One of the biggest noticeable influences in the film is the lighting. Throughout, Travis is illuminated (or not) by film noir esque lighting. Western film influence is evident in Travis himself, who is an outsider who is thrust into the light as a hero after events that may not always seem heroic, such as killing others. The brutality and gore of his “heroic” scene, where he marches through a whore house slaughtering all of the pimps within, would be reminiscent of a slasher film. Also, the framing, clutter, and the sharp angles and turns of this scene remind me of the Italian’s films. The shooting scene also was reminiscent of the gangster type violence of film noir. The isolation comes into play when we see Travis driving his taxi cab. He runs the streets, and they are steeped in shadow, with little light. Along with that, there are little living things present. When Travis goes to the movies, he sits in the frame separated from the other movie goers. At the diner he sits alone, and at home his wide, empty room is occupied by only Travis. In a physical sense Travis Bickle is also alone. He lives in an apartment, alone. He walks the street, alone. He is alone in his dubious fashion choices, which include a mohawk, an army coat, and many other dodgy items. Even when he is working, he is alone in a sense, because while he has the job of a taxi driver, he is in the front seat and they are in the back, separated by a partition.
ReplyDeleteIn Taxi Driver, Scorsese seems to present his antihero as a sort of anti-Western hero. Instead of being alone in the desolate American frontier, he's on his own in a crowded city no more inviting than one of John Ford's deserts. Whereas Ford's movies show the desert landscapes in wide horizontal shots, Scorsese's New York sprawls upward, upward, alienating Travis. This presentation of the city is likely due to his Italian perspective on American pop culture. Whereas in a Western, the hero will undergo acts of violence that will be perceived as heroic to the audience due to the circumstances, Travis' actions are perceived as heroic within the world of the film, earning him praise, but they shock and almost disgust the viewer. The scene in which he saves the young prostitute is drenched in darkness and copious amounts of blood, and gives us the impression of a horror movie scene rather than a heroic climax, even ending with the girl weeping and begging for her life. A classic example of a Western hero would be Ethan from the searchers. He is unapologetically racist and brutal, yet the audience sympathizes with him because of the nobility of his initial mission and how he is presented. Travis, however, is shown alone in his apartment with his guns, talking to imaginary victims, and often tells people how he wants to clean the streets of undesirables. Long shots of him staring at his television screen cause us to reject him as a hero figure, and even though his actions can be considered noble, we've seen too much of his nature to consider him a hero. We've seen too many shots of him, cloaked in darkness, shrugging off the bright city lights as he kills his sleepless night working his taxi job. Taxi Driver has a lower body count than the average Western, but the thirst with which Travis kills affects us more than a stoic John Wayne blasting Indians.
ReplyDeleteBickle is a bizarre protagonist, a loner, former soldier, insomniac, and night shift cab driver. He’s a man scarred by war but nearly content with life until he encounters the corruption and crime of New York first hand during one of his late night drives. Scorsese takes this bizarre mash up traits and turns them into an iconic anti-hero. Bickle’s brooding, loner nature allows him construct in his mind an over the top dramatization of the state of the city one that prompts him to plan an assassination of a presidential candidate as well as a bloody liberation of a young prostitute.
ReplyDeleteAt the culmination of the film we can see clearly Scorsese’s influences from the western genre. Bickle drives up to sport like John Wayne riding up to a native camp atop a powerful stallion. He shoots through a greater number of men to get to his damsel in distress in a series of rapid shots and most importantly he survives.
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ReplyDeleteMartin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver of 1976 is an american vigilante film with neo-noir and psychological thriller elements that centers around the life of an isolated loner living in the vibrant environment of New York City. In the words of Roger Ebert, “The movie rarely strays very far from the personal, highly subjective way in which he sees the city and lets it wound him”, what is most interesting to me about the themes of isolation in this film is that Travis chooses isolation and makes his world something to hate. Again in Ebert’s 1989 Movie Home Companion he comments on the character of Travis Bickle, “Travis could in theory look for fares anywhere in the city, but he’s constantly drawn back to 42nd Street, To Times Square and the whores, street freaks, and porno houses...Travis isn’t into that, he hates it, but Times Square only feeds his anger.” What is unique about Bickle is that he surrounds himself with things he hates in order to drive him further into isolation.
DeleteThe Italian Neorealist movement showcased central themes of survival as the primary objective through industrial characteristics, often ending in tragedy. In Taxi Driver, because Travis makes his world around him so intolerable that the basic act of survival becomes the primary objective even though this film does not take place in a post-war setting-- which is what ties this film’s narrative to the italian neorealist movement. Pauline Kael refers to a specific shot in Taxi Driver in her review that was connected to the Italian Neorealist movement, where Scorsese gives us a shot of Travis on a pay telephone and then, as Betsy is turning him down, the camera slowly dollies to the right and looks down a long empty hallway. In Kael’s review this shot was called “a lapse during which Scorsese was maybe borrowing from Antonioni” this statement is not only important because it calls attention to what Scorsese thought was the most important shot of the film but because it references one of the greatest auteurs of Italian Neorealism, hence building a connection between Taxi Driver and the movement as a whole. What is important about this dollying shot is that it is as if we can’t bear to watch Travis feel the pain of being rejected, which is almost identical to the feeling we get from a sequence in Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City after we see a son, Marcello, witness his mother, Pina, be shot and killed right in front of him. In Rossellini’s sequence a character comes to our savior by pulling Marcello off of his Mother’s corpse whereas in Taxi Driver we are brought to a long shot of the city streets. It is incredibly interesting and eye-opening how Scorsese can evoke similar emotions to those experienced in post-war tragedies.
While Scorsese showcases his abilities to evoke heart-wrenching emotions in this film, the overarching feeling of fear is imminent throughout this film as well. Ebert refers to this film as a “brilliant nightmare” and “a masterpiece of suggestive characterization” that “tells us nothing and everything: we don’t know the specifics of Travis’ complaint, but in a chilling way we know what we need of know of him”, truthfully this film is a compilation of multiple movements and genres that is altogether a look into the way we behave as a society; Scorsese makes us want to look away from Travis’ rejection and we almost want to look away from his life. “But he’s there, all right, and he’s suffering.”
Taxi Driver is easily an extremely iconic film that will carry through generations because of it’s meaning. This film displays a types of loneliness and isolation that we all feel we will never escape from. The protagonist goes through the typical emotions of any human having a rough spot, but deals with it differently mentally and physically. A lot of the time Travis blends into the frame and doesn’t stick out which makes it seem like he is suffocating and slowly becoming the backseat driver in his own life. He is watching himself day by day drive people around in the taxi and never feels any emotion or exciting feeling.
ReplyDeleteThe letters that he writes and the narrative on top of it create an even more intensified feeling of emotion. This isolates the viewer inside of his head so that we can feel his loneliness as he constantly is listening the sound of his own voice talking about his boring and uneventful life. In a lot of scenes he is often obscured to show how much he thinks of himself because the film is generically from his perspective. When he drives the taxi the frame is often position behind him with his profile even blurred out. A scene at the beginning is really symbolic of the isolation. Travis is driving taxi his first night and a fire hydrant explodes on the side of the road and he drives right through the water. For a moment no light enters the car and you cannot see anything, but Travis trapped by the water and the car like you feel in a car wash. Then when the water clears nothing exciting is behind that wall of water. Only darkness is there to greet Travis even when he escapes his loneliness. Another scene that shows this is when Travis is sitting in the taxi looking on the lady in the office and he is obscured by not only the window, but the water droplets on the window. The Taxi is his cover that he puts himself under that keeps his life static and never changing. The last scene before the credits, Travis drops off the lady at home and then as he drives away he is blurred, but then he takes hold of the mirror and adjusts it so that we can see his eyes fully in focus. It is the representation of him taking hold of his life and forcing himself out of his comfort zone to get what he wants. The colors at the end are darker and more vibrant ending with the warm colors of the city.
The colors in the movie are bland and never changing in the beginning. It is another representation of no change and it is the static thing that is Travis’ life. The colors and dull and he blends, but the colors never change even when the girl enters his life or when he starts his planning. The colors only darken at the end of the movie after the deed is done.
Travis is essentially depressed and he is driving himself into a downward spiral of mass proportion and the situation he finds himself in, just happens to benefit him. As an unlikely hero because of the rock bottom type of life he was living, the conclusion was extremely surprising and suspense ridden. This film draws from Italian Neorealism in it’s complete frankness about the trials and struggles of life and politics. The way that they display him in his apartment is almost like you are sitting there with him or when you see him in the taxi it is like you are standing on the street corner watching all of this go down. Though this is a smaller plot-line and not a completely city, it shows a more serious subject and addresses real problems that people deal with.
Carson Bloomingdale
The theme of isolation throughout the movie can be seen through the lighting and composition. The lighting gives the film a nightmarish aura, like we’re trapped in this hellish world with our anti-hero Travis. He is mostly presented in dark, eerie places: alone driving his taxi at night, in porno theaters, shooting up who he thinks are oppressors, etc. The film serves as a piece of this lonely man’s life and how he perceives the world. We see his nightmarish view of the world through the story as well. Because he is outcast from society, he comes up with his own ideas of the people and world that he observes. He chooses to give himself a negative view of the world, constantly hanging around the gutters of NYC, which impacts his view of everything else. He gives himself a black and white impression on what is right and wrong, even though there is much more ambiguity he does not see. In the case of the prostitute he saves, we have seen that she is not entirely miserable in her life, and we never really see why she left home, but Travis imagines her as being a victim of the pimp and environment, so he feels he has to rescue her. Maybe he’s right, maybe she is a damsel in distress, but what we know for sure is that Travis imagines it that way partly because of his severe isolation. The composition often isolates him as well. Early on when we see him staring at the woman through the door at Palantine’s campaign office, he is alone in the frame. When we see him driving his taxi around at night, he is often the only one on the road.
ReplyDeleteTaxi Driver is a film influenced by many different genres, particularly horror, westerns, and italian neorealism. Horror’s influence is seen in the lighting and general nightmarish atmosphere of the film. The horror elements in this film heighten the horrors of the city, showing us Travis’s point of view. He sees the city in this way, and since he is going crazy and thinks of the world as a nightmarish place, seeing the city in a horror-movie fashion is very appropriate. Travis’s character is similar to the heroes of western movies, isolated and heroic, but in this film, the hero really isn’t seen as hero. They see him as such in the film, but we see too much of the darkness in his personal life to really consider him a hero. The influence of italian neorealist films is in the usage of real-world places, and the emotional impact on the characters. Roger Ebert references the shot where Travis is rejected by the girl on the phone. The dollying over to the empty hallway because it is too horrible to see the impact it has on Travis. This shot shows us a lot about Travis’s character, because the rejection is shown to be more horrible than the things he sees on the streets and the shootout at the end. Knowing that Travis thinks of the rejection as worse than the other things shows us what’s important in his life, and that he creates the rest of his world to go around that.
Taxi Driver is not a pretty film. It is not a film that evokes feelings of happiness, or satisfaction, or even finality. Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese, is a film that tackles the filth of human existence head on. It evokes feelings od disgust and pity for the people in the film because their lives are so, for lack of a better word, "sinful". A great deal of that feeling comes from the cinematic focus on isolation and being a loner. Travis is able to be portrayed at the same time as someone we fear, someone we desperately want to help, and someone we pity.
ReplyDeleteAn antihero, by definition, is a main character who lacks the tradition traits of a hero such as altruism, idealism, courage, nobility, fortitude, and moral goodness. To himself, Travis is acting in the cause of all of these traits, however, in a fundamentally skewed way. This indifference to the normal notion of "good" is what makes him an anti-hero. He acts with blinders on. Although his goal is altruistic, and idealistic- to help Iris and “rid the city of scum”, he disregards morals in the way he goes about it, with guns, and murder in cold blood. He has a faint sense of nobility and courage about him- he served in the war, he, at first, courts Cybil Shepard’s character in a romantic way. But he is clearly not truly noble, he comes from an anonymous family, and I don’t think courage plays a role with his decisions whatsoever.
The theme of isolation, and the focus on his being a loner, I feel really makes this movie. Its what makes Travis such a powerful, relatable, and conflicting character. There are long stretches of the film with no dialogue, only his voice over. The bright spots are when he truly interacts with people, like Betsy. All other times people appear in hoards, on the streets, walking by, or at the political rallies. Or if he does interact one-on-one with someone it is with a façade, he never shows his true self, and we feel for him. There is music, and the sounds of the city, and his voiceover, and little else. This film feels reminiscent of many eras, many times that came before it, and even the future. This must be because Scorsese was deeply influenced by his predecessors, borrowing from distinctly the Westerns, the script was written with a very particular western in mind. You see the influence of horror in the creation of the pimps and drug dealers, and even the politicians as the monsters of the city. The lighting and use of shadows is reminiscent of film noir, and the diverse and somewhat flamboyant cast of characters seems to take a note from Fellini.
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