Post by Capo on Nov 22, 2005 21:51:24 GMT
Taxi Driver
Director: Martin Scorsese
1976 USA
New York. Hell. Prostitutes, thieves, murderers, hold ups, pimps, cunts, beggars, .44 Magnums doing unseen things to women’s pussies. Unable to sleep at night, Travis Bickle becomes a taxi driver. Unable to come to terms with the crumbling society around him, he befriends Besty, a campaign worker for a senator and presidential candidate. Taking her to a porn movie, he fails to impress, and his further propositions are snubbed. He then meets Iris, a teenage prostitute, and decides to help her escape the life of grime when he encounters her pimp.
De Niro is of a rare breed of performers, and, before spiralling into commercial abandon to fund new restaurants, was renowned for giving his roles a hundred percent. For Raging Bull (1980), he became retired boxer Jake La Motta, who debauches his way out of the ring and drinks his way to a modest living on stage in nightclubs. It is fair to say, then, that he relishes pain. As with all of the finest method actors, there is an underlying—or even overt—sense of sadomasochism, the notion that suffering gives ultimate pleasure and reward. Here, like in Cape Fear (1991), De Niro’s body is defined with each muscle pumping out of his wiry-thin frame. At one point, he narrates to us that “I’ve gotta get in shape now, too much sitting is ruining my body, too much abuse has gone on for too long,” and embarks on an unsettlingly dedicated training method, in which he holds his hand above a flame, just like Harvey Keitel’s Charlie does in Mean Streets (1973), as if to reassert himself as someone devoid of spiritual or physical weakness, the complete human being—which in the case of Travis, becomes the complete, almost-robotic killing machine, armed with knives and guns so as to be a more subdued Rambo.
De Niro committed from the start, and, seemingly, to the very finish. When it came to filming the final scene, in which Bickle, sporting a Mohawk and fiery smile, points a finger to his bloody temple and imitates three shots, De Niro apparently had become so embroiled in the role, many thought he would never emerge. Just like Bickle rides “anytime, anywhere” in order to feed his own hate, Scorsese too fed him the energy to burst into a believable burning rage, not least of all in the scene wherein the director plays a passenger who reveals he is to kill his wife for sleeping with a nigger. Although the words spoken are those of scriptwriter Paul Schrader, the hatred with which they’re delivered is clearly the director’s. And indeed, the film itself is a drug to feed his obsession with violent premonitions and religious guilt, with the recurring depiction of violence as a seductive metaphor for escaping society.
Robert Towne once remarked that an actor affects his audience “not by talking, fighting, fucking, killing, cursing or cross-dressing,” but “by being photographed.” Scorsese’s camera, despite all the pans away, is in love with the actor, relishing every second he fills the frame. Bickle is the Holden Caulfield of celluloid, a sociopath loner who, between shifts, frequents adult movie theatres and cleans the blood and cum from the back seats of his cab. After failing to impress his date Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) after a trip to a porn film, he acquaints twelve-year-old prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster), whose pimp ‘Sport’ (an unlovely Harvey Keitel, who looks like he was found by Scorsese when editing Woodstock six years earlier) assures Bickle that he can fuck her in the ass, mouth, anywhere he wants, and that he’ll certainly be coming back for more. Bickle, surrounded by unrelenting, inescapable violence, takes it upon himself to clean the streets himself and rescue Iris.
For the famous “You talking to me?” scene, De Niro improvised from his days under teacher Stella Adler (or, as one source claimed, he could be imitating Bruce Springsteen’s rhetoric when the crowd chant for more). Up until this point, Bickle has addressed viewers only with his diary entries, combined with Scorsese’s shots of the words he’s penned. But here, as he slides his guns in and out of his holsters, he confronts not only the mirror and himself, but the audience watching him. Scorsese, always aware of his medium, knew this and, it is said, just kept telling De Niro to repeat what he was saying. The result is unsettlingly effective; from this point, we are not mere empathetic onlookers, but very much implicated in Bickle’s unstoppable act.
Taxi Driver is directed with assured bravado, the early technical wizardry of the director and an almost elusive feel for the Gothic. Nods to Godard (the fizzing close-up recalls Two or Three Things We Know About Her, 1966; while panning between characters echoes the distinctive style of Le Mépris, 1963) are balanced with resemblances to Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967) and Robert Grant and Gary Winogrand’s work, which places people to one side of a frame, looking out of the picture. At a crucial moment in the film, one which Scorsese claims he thought of before any other, Bickle talks to Betsy on a payphone after she has rejected him. The camera crabs to the right so that we hear the conversation continue, but he is no longer in view; indeed, this is too cringeworthy to take, for, in the depths of our unconscious, we already foresee the climax it will lead to. Even the credits give, especially in retrospect, a lingering sense of foreboding: Bickle’s cab emerges like some kind of heavenly angel through the thick steamy fog of the streets. The fog itself can be interpreted as a metaphor: an asphyxiating world of seedy corruption which, despite the rain and frightfully violent finale to come, will never be washed away. As Bernard Herrmann’s score suggests, there are two sides to this life: the dreamy elusiveness in the jazzy, noirish sax riff, contrasted by, with the musical equivalent of a coin-flip, the accelerando of military snares and pounding timpani.
When you’ve seen it as many times as I have, including a big screen viewing, and after watching Scorsese’s more recent, ambitious projects, it is always rewarding to come back to this and remind ourselves of the director’s cinematic significance. Scorsese’s style has scarcely changed (though admittedly, his work is far safer now than it was in Who’s That Knocking At My Door, 1967). But for a director who is one of the most important to emerge from the 1970s avant-garde (Scorsese himself seems to have made Taxi Driver so as to re-distinguish his own counter-culture status after the cop-out ending of 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore), we must now await a remake of the Infernal Affairs trilogy and with caution and perhaps, like Travis Bickle himself, wish for the real rain to come, and wash away the scum which has blocked Marty’s veins.
CREDITS
Director
Martin Scorsese
Producers
Julia Phillips
Michael Phillips
Screenplay
Paul Schrader
Director of Photography
Michael Chapman
Film Editing
Tom Rolf
Melvin Shapiro
Original Score
Bernard Herrmann
Art Direction
Charles Rosen
CAST
Robert De Niro
Travis Bickle
Cybill Shepherd
Betsy
Jodie Foster
Iris
Harvey Keitel
Matthew (“Sport”)
Peter Boyle
Wizard
Albert Brooks
Tom
Leonard Harris
Senator Charles Palantine
Director: Martin Scorsese
1976 USA
New York. Hell. Prostitutes, thieves, murderers, hold ups, pimps, cunts, beggars, .44 Magnums doing unseen things to women’s pussies. Unable to sleep at night, Travis Bickle becomes a taxi driver. Unable to come to terms with the crumbling society around him, he befriends Besty, a campaign worker for a senator and presidential candidate. Taking her to a porn movie, he fails to impress, and his further propositions are snubbed. He then meets Iris, a teenage prostitute, and decides to help her escape the life of grime when he encounters her pimp.
De Niro is of a rare breed of performers, and, before spiralling into commercial abandon to fund new restaurants, was renowned for giving his roles a hundred percent. For Raging Bull (1980), he became retired boxer Jake La Motta, who debauches his way out of the ring and drinks his way to a modest living on stage in nightclubs. It is fair to say, then, that he relishes pain. As with all of the finest method actors, there is an underlying—or even overt—sense of sadomasochism, the notion that suffering gives ultimate pleasure and reward. Here, like in Cape Fear (1991), De Niro’s body is defined with each muscle pumping out of his wiry-thin frame. At one point, he narrates to us that “I’ve gotta get in shape now, too much sitting is ruining my body, too much abuse has gone on for too long,” and embarks on an unsettlingly dedicated training method, in which he holds his hand above a flame, just like Harvey Keitel’s Charlie does in Mean Streets (1973), as if to reassert himself as someone devoid of spiritual or physical weakness, the complete human being—which in the case of Travis, becomes the complete, almost-robotic killing machine, armed with knives and guns so as to be a more subdued Rambo.
De Niro committed from the start, and, seemingly, to the very finish. When it came to filming the final scene, in which Bickle, sporting a Mohawk and fiery smile, points a finger to his bloody temple and imitates three shots, De Niro apparently had become so embroiled in the role, many thought he would never emerge. Just like Bickle rides “anytime, anywhere” in order to feed his own hate, Scorsese too fed him the energy to burst into a believable burning rage, not least of all in the scene wherein the director plays a passenger who reveals he is to kill his wife for sleeping with a nigger. Although the words spoken are those of scriptwriter Paul Schrader, the hatred with which they’re delivered is clearly the director’s. And indeed, the film itself is a drug to feed his obsession with violent premonitions and religious guilt, with the recurring depiction of violence as a seductive metaphor for escaping society.
Robert Towne once remarked that an actor affects his audience “not by talking, fighting, fucking, killing, cursing or cross-dressing,” but “by being photographed.” Scorsese’s camera, despite all the pans away, is in love with the actor, relishing every second he fills the frame. Bickle is the Holden Caulfield of celluloid, a sociopath loner who, between shifts, frequents adult movie theatres and cleans the blood and cum from the back seats of his cab. After failing to impress his date Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) after a trip to a porn film, he acquaints twelve-year-old prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster), whose pimp ‘Sport’ (an unlovely Harvey Keitel, who looks like he was found by Scorsese when editing Woodstock six years earlier) assures Bickle that he can fuck her in the ass, mouth, anywhere he wants, and that he’ll certainly be coming back for more. Bickle, surrounded by unrelenting, inescapable violence, takes it upon himself to clean the streets himself and rescue Iris.
For the famous “You talking to me?” scene, De Niro improvised from his days under teacher Stella Adler (or, as one source claimed, he could be imitating Bruce Springsteen’s rhetoric when the crowd chant for more). Up until this point, Bickle has addressed viewers only with his diary entries, combined with Scorsese’s shots of the words he’s penned. But here, as he slides his guns in and out of his holsters, he confronts not only the mirror and himself, but the audience watching him. Scorsese, always aware of his medium, knew this and, it is said, just kept telling De Niro to repeat what he was saying. The result is unsettlingly effective; from this point, we are not mere empathetic onlookers, but very much implicated in Bickle’s unstoppable act.
Taxi Driver is directed with assured bravado, the early technical wizardry of the director and an almost elusive feel for the Gothic. Nods to Godard (the fizzing close-up recalls Two or Three Things We Know About Her, 1966; while panning between characters echoes the distinctive style of Le Mépris, 1963) are balanced with resemblances to Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967) and Robert Grant and Gary Winogrand’s work, which places people to one side of a frame, looking out of the picture. At a crucial moment in the film, one which Scorsese claims he thought of before any other, Bickle talks to Betsy on a payphone after she has rejected him. The camera crabs to the right so that we hear the conversation continue, but he is no longer in view; indeed, this is too cringeworthy to take, for, in the depths of our unconscious, we already foresee the climax it will lead to. Even the credits give, especially in retrospect, a lingering sense of foreboding: Bickle’s cab emerges like some kind of heavenly angel through the thick steamy fog of the streets. The fog itself can be interpreted as a metaphor: an asphyxiating world of seedy corruption which, despite the rain and frightfully violent finale to come, will never be washed away. As Bernard Herrmann’s score suggests, there are two sides to this life: the dreamy elusiveness in the jazzy, noirish sax riff, contrasted by, with the musical equivalent of a coin-flip, the accelerando of military snares and pounding timpani.
When you’ve seen it as many times as I have, including a big screen viewing, and after watching Scorsese’s more recent, ambitious projects, it is always rewarding to come back to this and remind ourselves of the director’s cinematic significance. Scorsese’s style has scarcely changed (though admittedly, his work is far safer now than it was in Who’s That Knocking At My Door, 1967). But for a director who is one of the most important to emerge from the 1970s avant-garde (Scorsese himself seems to have made Taxi Driver so as to re-distinguish his own counter-culture status after the cop-out ending of 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore), we must now await a remake of the Infernal Affairs trilogy and with caution and perhaps, like Travis Bickle himself, wish for the real rain to come, and wash away the scum which has blocked Marty’s veins.
CREDITS
Director
Martin Scorsese
Producers
Julia Phillips
Michael Phillips
Screenplay
Paul Schrader
Director of Photography
Michael Chapman
Film Editing
Tom Rolf
Melvin Shapiro
Original Score
Bernard Herrmann
Art Direction
Charles Rosen
CAST
Robert De Niro
Travis Bickle
Cybill Shepherd
Betsy
Jodie Foster
Iris
Harvey Keitel
Matthew (“Sport”)
Peter Boyle
Wizard
Albert Brooks
Tom
Leonard Harris
Senator Charles Palantine
