Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Taxi Driver" (1976). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

 

There isn't any other movie, which encapsulated the urban and structural decay of 1970s New York City, as Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" (1976) achieved, whilst offering a glimpse of social isolation and the breaking down of mental stability, centered around "Travis Bickle", played by a very young Robert De Niro.  As we track, from the beginning, to the climatic end of the movie, Bickle's psychological deterioration, and what will eventually trigger him to murder.   Written by Paul Schrader, as an expose of loneliness, despair and violence, within the male psychology.  Drawing from real life examples, on how it does lead onto aggression, eventuating into psychosis, with the attempted assassination of Alabama governor George Wallace in 1972, by Arthur Bremer, to which Schrader had based Bickle's motivation, and state of mind, as he attempts to assassinate the fictional "Senator Charles Palantine" (played by the late Leonard Harris).

Scorsese's 5th film, and essentially propelling him as one of the more accessible edgy directors of the 1970s going into the 1980s, influenced by noir French cinema of the1950s, to which "Taxi Driver" with its sepia toned, and washed out colours, portraying the mental distortions that insomnia, and night work can do to the human mind.  Be it, the shadows, darkness and neon lit streets, to which we travel with "Travis Bickle" in his iconic yellow New York cab, dealing with his battle of loneliness, and trauma, as a Vietnam war veteran, slipping into a schizotypal state of mind, with reality being distorted and jumbled, from a lack of sleep, stress, and fear. 

Despite the portrayal of extreme and realistic violence throughout the movie, Scorsese stipulated that it was a movie, "that came from the heart" and was a thought process, which Paul Schrader, Robert De Niro and himself, were all going through at the time, with scenery of New York City, in all of its glorious deplatation, adding to the movie's grit and grime, which was the reality of the crumbling 1950s urban dream, which had come to an end.   

However, there is no doubting that "Travis Bickle" is a loser, as Robert De Niro doesn't portray the character within an endearing charm, but rather a psychologically disturbed individual, who is switching or vidicating blame of the self, to his environment, as a reason why he feels like he is slipping into violence.  Blaming women, social equality, and 1970s hedonism as why society is morally collapsing, with an paradoxal empathic cue, where he attempts to rescue a 12 year old Jodie Foster, who plays the street prostitute "Iris Steensma", particularly the uber violent ending, with Bickle in a shootout with Iris's pimp (Harvey Keitel), and mafioso henchman, in one of the bloodiest, and most realistic shootouts in cinema history.  To which a very young Forster was supervised by a UCLA psychiatrist to ensure she wouldn't be traumatized on set by the violence.

And yet, it is the ending which holds the most myth, with the score, which was his final, by the late Bernard Herrmann, who passed away in 1975 before the movie "Taxi Driver" was released, ensuring a dramatic backdrop, that "Travis Bickle" did not survive the shootout, but rather went into a delirious fantasy of heroism before passing, as we see his spirit leave, filmed from above, the crime scene and drift into New York City streets of 1976.

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(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema