Taxi Driver (1976)

Directed by Martin Scorsese; written by Paul Schrader

I lived in Texas and had never visited the East Coast when I first saw all of the mid-70s films set in New York -- "The French Connection," "Assault on Precinct 13," "Dog Day Afternoon." "Serpico," "An Unmarried Woman," "The Hospital" with George C. Scott, and so on. It was from these films that I formed my idea of what New York was like. There were twice as many I never saw until years later, like "Panic in Needle Park," "Midnight Cowboy," "Mean Streets," but if I had, I would have come away with the same impression -- that New York was dirty, chaotic, and frightening. And I kept this impression until I finally visited New York 20 years later, in the mid-90s, and saw that it was not a shitshow after all, at least not anymore.

But more than any other, the film that contributed to the impression that New York was a hellhole was "Taxi Driver," in which a Vietnam vet named travis (Robert DeNiro) with severe PTSD -- he can't sleep at all -- goes crazy, develops an animus toward the city and its denizens -- hookers, pimps, thieves, rageful men, and also the blonde princess (Cybill Shepherd) who initially accepts his interest and then rejects him -- and decides to embody the deluge he's been waiting for all along, the "real rain" that will "come and sweep the scum off the streets."

That he's very clearly part of that scum, he never understands. But just as much as pimps and drug dealers (especially the corporate ones) are responsible for the subsequent degradation of America, so are the lonely, violent, avenging young men, of whom Travis Bickle is an avitar.

It's hard to find anything to say about this movie if you've seen it several times, which is probably true for anyone who was of moviegoing age when it was released almost 50 years ago. But something struck me about ten minutes into the film. It's during Travis's first voiced journal entry. He's talking about driving, then Betsy, the campaign worker whom he's glimpsed.

Typically for a man, he already has a whole fantasy woven around her and the pedestal he's put her on. But what struck me was the way Travis's voice suddenly slows to the pace of his handwriting. "They... cannot... touch... her." Ten minutes into the film, it seizes control. After that moment, you'll give the movie whatever it asks.

I'm also aware that this is a film men obsess over, as in "Barbie" where they mention a man who incessantly explains "The Godfather" to women. And that this film created the template for the lonely, loony assassin. So I've already said enough.