An Undisputed Masterpiece Celebrates 50 Years

On Feb. 8, 1976, Taxi Driver was released in theaters. Martin Scorsese’s fifth feature film, written by Paul Schrader, starred Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, a lonely man who applies for a job as a New York City taxi driver because of his insomnia. Following a rejection from a woman he became infatuated with and being exposed to some of the city’s worst people working late at night, Bickle starts to transform his body and begins purchasing firearms, turning into a dangerous vigilante.

Controversial at the time of its release, particularly for the child sex worker subplot and for Foster herself being 13 during production, Taxi Driver was both critically acclaimed and a box office hit. Taxi Driver grossed $28.3 million against its $1.9 million budget. It won the Palme d’Or at the 29th Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. However, it lost to Rocky, the year’s most uplifting movie. Yet over time, Taxi Driver‘s status as one of the greatest movies ever made has only grown. 50 years later, it remains a masterpiece.

‘Taxi Driver’: A Cinematic Masterpiece

Taxi Driver is one of the quintessential movies of the New Hollywood movement, an era of filmmaking defined by the collapse of the studio system and the emergence of young filmmakers and established talent who addressed topical subjects and spoke to the moment, reaching a new generation of younger, more politically minded moviegoers that craved films that felt “real” and a break from the safe movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age. These were films like Bonnie & Clyde, A Love Story, The Exorcist, The Last Picture Show, The Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, Harold and Maude, and of course, Taxi Driver.

Taxi Driver is a masterpiece, easily in the top five films Martin Scorsese has ever directed. That certainly says something, given the director’s impressive career. In what would become a recurring motif in films like Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese puts the viewer in the point of view of the central character’s often warped logic, while never endorsing it, allowing the audience to revel in it and get some satisfaction out of it even if they know they aren’t supposed to.

Scorsese’s moody, atmospheric tone makes New York City feel like a living nightmare. Scorsese mixes a mythological structure with an urban metropolitan hellscape, with Travis Bickle as a 1976 spin on the mythic warrior who must descend into the underworld to save a young girl from monsters. With every frame filmed with symbolism and visual language that communicates so much about the characters, Taxi Driver is a reminder of why Scorsese remains, to this day, one of the greatest to ever step behind the camera.

Despite already being a well-respected actor by the time Taxi Driver was released, De Niro’s performance as Travis Bickle made him a star and solidified his status as one of the greatest actors ever. Unlike his Oscar-winning performance as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, who was previously played by Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Travis Bickle is a character De Niro gets to create from the ground up. Travis Bickle might be the character De Niro is still closely associated with after all these years, with the character’s mohawk and sunglasses etched in film history as one of the most iconic appearances. De Niro’s depiction of Bickle is captivating and frightening, and he turns a simple scene of him talking to himself in the mirror into one of the most quotable lines of all time. That’s not hyperbole, as the line “You talkin’ to me?” ranks tenth on AFI’s Greatest Movie Quotes list.

One of the best elements in Taxi Driver is, of course, Bernard Hermann’s score. The lonely, dark, atmospheric jazz sound highlights the at times quiet nature of a late night while also emphasizing the underlying loneliness. Yet it is also strangely romantic and soothing, which reflects Travis Bickle’s desire for human connection. Taxi Driver would be Hermann’s final score, and he completed the music for the film hours before he died on Dec. 24, 1975. Taxi Driver is dedicated to Hermann. In a career whose work included Citizen Kane, Psycho, and The Day the Earth Stood Still, to name a few, Taxi Driver is a high note to go out on.

‘Taxi Driver’ Spoke to Audiences’ Frustrations and the Anxiety of the Time

Columbia Pictures

When Taxi Driver was released in 1976, it had been three years since the United States withdrew from the Vietnam War. Taxi Driver also opened four years after the Watergate scandal broke, and two years after Richard Nixon resigned from office. Vietnam, coupled with political corruption, shattered the American psyche and its self-belief. It was a cynical time, and movies about hardboiled anti-heroes like Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, Dirty Harry in his first self-titled film, and Travis Bickle were born and thrived in this era, as these characters became avatars of collective American frustration.

Travis Bickle is established as a Vietnam War veteran, and the movie is one of the first major motion pictures of the era to tackle how the horrors of Vietnam and the general sentiment of the American people about the war impacted the soldiers who returned home and tried to integrate back into society. Taxi Driver paved the way for films like Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, and First Blood to examine how Vietnam shaped an entire generation. Taxi Driver’s depiction of Travis Bickle, a broken man who may not have fully come back from the horrors of war and now struggles to reintegrate himself into society after being trained in combat as a resolution for everything, would be carried over into many war films to come outside the Vietnam War, including the Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker.

A central plot point of Taxi Driver involves Senator Charles Palantine, who inspired George Lucas to name the Emperor in Star Wars Palpatine. After Betsy (Sybill Shepard), a volunteer for Palantine’s presidential campaign, rejects Travis Bickle after he takes her to a pornographic movie, Bickle plans to assassinate Palantine. Palantine, in many ways, represents the 1970s American public’s relationship with politicians, both as a hope that they can turn troubles around and as a complicit, corrupt part of a larger system.

Bickel’s attempted assassination inspired John Hickley Jr.’s real-life attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. John Hinckley Jr. said he was inspired by Taxi Driver and hoped it would impress the movie’s star, Jodie Foster. This revelation almost made Martin Scorsese quit filmmaking. This real-life act of violence, inspired by Taxi Driver, speaks to a broader theme in the movie. Taxi Driver is one of the classic films about disaffected loners who feel rejected by society. 50 years later, Taxi Driver feels sadly more topical.

50 Years Later, ‘Taxi Driver’ Still Feels Relevant

Columbia Pictures

Taxi Driver is careful to frame Travis Bickle as never fully heroic. Some of the people he criticizes are people on the LGBTQ+ spectrum or drug addicts, whom he sees as a weakness instead of a sickness. He is judgmental of everyone and has a deep-rooted hatred of the world. There is an argument to be made that he thinks the entire city is too far gone and should be wiped off the map. He pretty much says that when he says the city should be “flushed down the toilet.”

While Bickle’s actions to save Iris are rooted in a very real, noble human impulse, his earlier attempt at an assassination for no specific reason hints at his unstable, violent nature. His attacking a child-sex trafficking ring was him aiming his appetite for destruction in the right direction, with him being labeled “a hero” by the end of the film (in an ending many people still debate the reality of). However, if Bickle had killed Palantine, he would be labeled a murderer or a monster. It is all a matter of perception of targets, something Bickle likely knows due to his time as a soldier, as people will accept a certain level of violence if the right person is killed.

Travis Bickle’s isolation cannot help but draw comparisons to reports of the male loneliness epidemic. In a world where social media and access to people around the world are supposed to, in theory, create connections, they instead make people feel isolated. An internet comment section where people shout bigoted, racist, sexist, and homophobic comments feels less like the shiny utopia that the information age promised and more like the dirty, crime-infested streets of New York that Travis Bickle drove around in. Cases of lone individuals using guns to inflict violence on a world that wronged them or a world they feel is corrupt are horrific and traumatizing when the safety of a movie’s artificial nature is removed.

Taxi Driver is a movie that gets better with every viewing, and holds as much power today as it did when it premiered in 1976. It remains one of the greatest movies to come out of the New Hollywood movement and is forever a part of cinematic culture, both in its own iconography and the many films it inspired. In 50 years, people will still be talking about Taxi Driver.