The Movie Book

236 TAXI DRIVER

00:19

Travis enters the

campaign office of Senator

Palatine to volunteer, as an

excuse to talk to his aide

Betsy. He takes her for coffee.

00:32

When Travis takes Betsy

to a porn movie, she walks

out in disgust. He calls her

and sends flowers, but she

brushes him off.

01:05

A store is held up at

gunpoint while Travis is in it.

He shoots the thief. The store

owner covers for him, since

Travis has no gun permit.

01:30

At a rally for Palatine, Travis

is spotted by a security guard

as he approaches the Senator

and seems to reach for his gun.

Travis leaves without firing.

I

t is 1976, and there are around

7.8 million people living in

New York City. Travis Bickle

(Robert De Niro) regards them all

through the filthy windows of his

cab—everywhere he looks, from

Times Square to East 13th Street

by way of Park Avenue South, there

are people, but to Travis they may

as well be characters in a movie.

He is an outsider, alienated and

angry, who views the world from

the inside of a car. This is the taxi

driver of Martin Scorsese’s movie,

who drifts through the city in a

clammy fever dream.

Cleansing rain

Taxi Driver is a dirty movie,

not in the same way as the porn

movies that Travis likes to watch

in the run-down theaters of 42nd

Street, but in its depiction of the

grimy city. Scorsese shot the movie

in the summer heat wave of 1975,

during a trash-collection strike that

left Manhattan mountainous with

rotting garbage. “Thank God for

the rain to wash the trash off the

sidewalk,” says Travis. “Someday

a real rain will come and wash all

this scum off the streets.”

In Travis’s world, the only clean

things are his conscience and his

driving licence. To him, everything

else is disgusting, including his

fellow New Yorkers. He finds them

degenerate, railing against

prostitution, homosexuality, and

drug taking. When Travis talks

about a cleansing rain, he means

it biblically, apocalyptically. But

he is not a religious fanatic—he

just wants a purpose. His God

exists only to give him the order

to kill, just as his commanding

officer did when Travis served

as a marine in the Vietnam War.

Lost soul

Travis is lost in so many ways:

he fought on the losing side in the

war in Southeast Asia, and now

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Psychological thriller

DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese

WRITER

Paul Schrader

STARS

Robert De Niro, Jodie

Foster, Cybill Shepherd,

Harvey Keitel

BEFORE

1973 Martin Scorsese,

Robert De Niro, and Harvey

Keitel team up for the first

time with Mean Streets, the

story of a low-ranking New

York mobster.

1974 De Niro shoots to fame

in The Godfather: Part II, as

the young Don Vito Corleone.

AFTER

1982 Scorsese directs De

Niro in The King of Comedy,

a black comedy about another

delusional New York loser.

1990 Scorsese returns to the

mob with Goodfellas, one of

his most popular movies.

00:27

Palatine gets into Travis’s

cab. Travis tells him the city

needs to be cleaned up. Later,

teenage prostitute Iris gets in,

but pimp Sport pulls her out.

00:51

After nearly running

over Iris, Travis buys

guns. He starts an

intense fitness regimen

and practices shooting.

00:00 00:15 00:30 00:45 01:00 01:15 01:30 01:53

01:21

The day after paying for

her time, Travis sees Iris for

breakfast. He says that he will

give her the money to leave

Sport and go to a commune.

01:34

Travis shoots Sport,

a hotel owner, and a

gambler who is with Iris.

He tries to shoot himself

but is out of bullets.

Minute by minute

The immediate response

is usually very visceral

and angry. But if this film

weren’t controversial,

there’d be something

wrong with the country.

Paul Schrader

Interview with Roger Ebert,

Chicago Sun-Times, 1976