TAXI DRIVER 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION: STILL POWERFUL

Forty years ago audiences were stunned by the movie TAXI DRIVER. Not only did it depict New York City as a world filled with seedy characters it was the first major role for Robert DeNiro who had grabbed the screen by the throat three years earlier in MEAN STREETS. It was also introduced writer Paul Schrader to most of the world, his only previous onscreen offering having been THE YAKUZA two years prior and was a follow up for director Martin Scorsese who had directed ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE 2 years earlier as well. This combination of talent created a movie still talked about to this day.

DeNiro plays Travis Bickle, a slightly unhinged Vietnam War vet dealing with bouts of insomnia. To make money while dealing with this he takes on the job of a night time taxi driver in New York. Rather than the up and coming Wall Street crowds this lends itself to his dealing with customers of an unsavory nature. Pimps and hustlers, prostitutes and riders with no issue having sex in the back seat while he drives. It’s a slimy world that we view through his eyes.

While he may seem undisturbed by all of this there is a strange sense of decency lying underneath this crust on display. Bickle has his own sense of what is right and wrong but even that is askew from what most of us would agree with. He looks down on the denizens of the night but doesn’t even realize how bad things are until we see later.

He befriends a young girl on the street, a near pre-teen prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster). For him it’s a question of friendship and trying to help her. For her he’s just another john, but someone nice rather than the usual clients she has.

One afternoon he notices a young woman working in the campaign office of Senator Charles Palantine. Obsessed with her he watches her whenever he can. One day he walks in and applies to work for the campaign, finding out her name is Betsy (Cybill Shepherd). He asks her out on a date and she agrees. But here is the glimpse of his not knowing right from wrong as he takes her to a XXX movie on the date. She walks out disturbed as he tries to find out what he did wrong, having no clue.

While still pursuing her he is pushed aside, denied the chance he longed for. This leads him to feel the need to do something to atone for the mistake he made, a way of cleansing the city streets he rides of the filth he sees there nightly. His mind is twisted and his first thought involved assassinating Palantine. But before the films end his search for redemption will lead him elsewhere.

The combined efforts of those mentioned earlier make this film work on all levels. Scorsese, a native of New York City, brings forth images of a location he knows well, the streets and neighborhoods he walked when he was young. It’s gritty, dirty and down to earth, no picture postcard land of hope. Schrader’s script builds on the location. The film could not have taken place in Boise. It allows us a glimpse at what lives in the darkened alleyways, the hopeless masses that find themselves working at the lowest of possible jobs just to survive where the law of the jungle rules.

DeNiro made a name for himself with his performance here. It’s not just the words that Bickle speaks, most of which are in his narration of events. It’s not the way that he looks at the world or watches what is going on around him. It’s not the odd way of thinking in a naïve way that makes him who he is. It is the combination of all of these things and more that make him shine in this role.

Everyone remembers the most quoted line from this film, “Are you talkin’ to me?” It is one moment in the film but a powerful one in the most subtle way. It shows the character of Bickle slowly losing touch with reality. There is no telling where he will go from here.

The movie remains a work of art as well as an entertaining film. Of course not entertaining for everyone, especially the easily offended. But to watch it now, 40 years later, and still feel its impact says a lot. Extras include three different commentary tracks, a Tribeca Film Festival Q&A for the 40^th Anniversary, featurettes including “Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver”, “Producing Taxi Driver”, “God’s Lonely Man”, Influence and Appreciation: A Martin Scorsese Tribute”, “Taxi Driver Stories”, “Travis’ New York” and “Travis New York Locations”, the theatrical trailer, the documentary “Making ‘Taxi Driver’”, the featurette “Intro to Storyboards by Martin Scorsese”, a storyboard to film comparison and galleries.

If you’ve never seen the film this is the way to do it. Not only because of the ton of extras included but because it’s the cleanest presentation of the film to date. Once seen it is not easily forgotten. It really is as good as they say.

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