Taxi Driver (1976)

Just a word on Scorcese's influences in making Taxi Driver
There's no question in my mind that the most significant influence in the direction is Roman Polanski.

God's Lonely Man
Scorsese's finest film explores the psyche of an unstable individual living in a self-imposed loneliness brought about by his schizophrenia. Travis Bickle is a taxi driver and a man plagued by his inability to integrate socially. Thus, the rejection he receives withdraws him further and further into his own delusions. He harbors nothing but contempt and loathing for the city of New York in which he lives; it is a city he sees filled with decay, crime, violence, and prostitution. Envisioning himself as "God's lonely man," Travis is surrounded by people he cannot approach nor relate to, people he consequently perceives as cold and distant. Scorsese places the viewer within this subjective schizoid experience with the cinematography and voice-over.

The plot takes Travis through his stages of rejection and follows him as his delusions evolve new releases for his frustrations. Because Travis considers his own shortcomings the result of other's actions, he extends this view to those around him and perceives others as suffering at the hands of external, corrupting figures also. Early in the film we are introduced to his muse and angel, Betsy, and we hear as he narrates from his diary, "they cannot touch her." This is a testament to both his delusional paranoia and his admiration for her. She is dressed in white and is captured walking slowly with a smile -- a symbol of the unspoilt purity Travis sees in her. He works up the courage to ask her on a date and she complies. They meet a few times, however, after Travis takes Betsy to a porno movie, she rejects him. There are a few theories as to why he brings her to the porno movie in the first place but the one I find most interesting (and the one which makes the most sense in the context of the rest of the film) is that Travis has what is known as the Madonna-whore complex meaning he cannot integrate his desires for love and sex -- there exists a dichotomy within his psychology which keeps the two separate. In his mind women who are sexually interested in him must be whores (for how else could they want ME?) and women who aren't sexually interested in him may remain desirable, but ultimately unlovable in the fullest sense. Nonetheless, following her rejection, Travis deludes himself into thinking she must be corrupted as well (she fails to return his phone calls so now he considers her cold and distant like all the rest, and therefore corrupted) and so begins the formulation of his master-plan to liberate the objects of his desire. This concludes the first stage of his rejection.

Travis finds his calling after crossing paths with a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris. Wanting to rescue her from her private hell, he offers to take her away from the pimp controlling her. Upon her refusal of his aid, he is now further troubled by this second rejection. (Getting back to the subject of the Madonna-whore complex, we can see that the woman Travis wants most, Betsy, he cannot have, and the one he doesn't want, Iris, he can have.) These events lead Travis to execute his grandiose plan to elevate himself to the level of a hero and free his objects of desire from their "own private hells." Seeking to remove the source of their corruption, Travis proceeds to assassinate a presidential candidate (whom he sees as the paternal figure to Betsy -- Betsy is a staunch supporter of his and a volunteer campaigner) and kill Iris' pimps. Although failing to assassinate the candidate, he does succeed in killing the pimps, albeit after taking a few shots to the neck and shoulder.

As the police arrive in the brothel after the carnage has taken place, we see Travis lift his gun up to his head and pull the trigger. Nothing, his ammunition is empty. Travis then draws his finger to his head and mimicks three gun shots. This symbolizes Travis' final rejection of himself following his previous two rejections.

In the final scene as he lays dying from his wounds, we see Travis' final vision/revelation. In this vision, the papers applaud him as the hero who rescued the young prostitute Iris and her parents even express their admiration for his actions. We even see Betsy come back to Travis, showing that his delusions are similar to the prototypical Hollywood ending wherein the main woman comes back to the hero at the end of the story. Although here Betsy appears open towards him, he remains cold and does not acknowledge her presence. He has accepted the theory of his fellow cabbie who tells him earlier that people tend to become their job. At the end, Travis accepts who he is as a taxi driver. Just preceding his implied physical death we witness his final spiritual affirmation as the film exits the way it entered, with Travis driving through the city in his taxi cab.

The motif here -- character receiving a vision of desired destiny, which he must reject before death -- is a recurring one throughout Scorsese's oeuvre. It is seen most strictly in The Last Temptation of Christ and Casino, for instance.

Taxi Driver
It's a great movie! De Niro at his finest.

"You talking to me?"