Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver is an American feature film, directed by Martin Scorsese from 1976.

The film is known for its strong acting performances and realism. The film was of great importance for the lead actors Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster, who at the time of the shooting was 14 years old. Foster got an Academy Award nomination for the best supporting actress and De Niro was nominated in the category best male lead. The film was also nominated for "Best Film" and the music of Bernard Herrmann (his last work before he died) for "best original music".



Content
[hide] *1 Cast  ==Division Of Roles[ Edit] == ==Story[ Edit] == Read warning: text below contains details about the content and/or the end of the story.Travis Bickle (De Niro), a frustrated war veteran of 26 years, has recently stopped at the Navy. He suffers from insomnia and therefore takes a job as a taxi driver in New York, and does not mind to work at night. In his spare time are watching Bickle porn movies in cinemas and he drives aimlessly in the bad neighborhoods of Manhattan.
 * 2 Story
 * 3 background information
 * 4 Production
 * 5 Sources
 * Robert De Niro: Travis Bickle
 * Jodie Foster: Iris Steensma
 * Cybill Shepherd: Betsy
 * Harvey Keitel: ' Sport ' Matthew
 * Peter Boyle: Wizard
 * Leonard Harris: Sen. Charles Palantine
 * Albert Brooks: Tom

Bickle is horrified by the disappearance of any awareness of standards and values. Bickle says: "All the animals come out at night-whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. "

If one evening Iris (played by Foster), a 12-year-old prostitute, coincidentally ends up in his taxi when she tries to escape her pimp, he is deeply touched. He wants to try and save her even if Iris that are themselves not at all. About her pimp, sports, she explains that he is actually a very friendly and caring person.

Bickle also suffers from the short and unsuccessful attempt to establish a relationship with Betsy (played by Cybill Shepherd). Betsy works for the senator of the State of New York called Palantine, which campaigns for the presidential nomination. Palantine promises drastic social changes. Betsy is in the beginning of their relationship intrigued by Bickle. First time, Bickle her out to lunch, in which he flirts with her and sympathizes with her loneliness. Eventually they make an appointment to go to the movie. Bickle takes her to a pornographic film, and Betsy leaves in disgust.

Then Bickle pulled in themselves still further. He buys a knife and 4 guns. During one of his journeys made a businessman (a small role of Martin Scorsese itself) to him from how he wants to kill his wife because they are cheating. When he retrieves messages at a store that he frequently visit a robbery committed, and Bickle shoot the robber down. Bickle writes a letter to his parents, in which he writes that he is working with key and secret government work. He also tells about Betsy.

Bickle is trying to express to his frustrating Wizard, a very experienced taxi driver. He says he has the compulsion to "do something big". Wizard says to him that he has to relax and to entertain themselves more.Travis has plans to commit an attack on senator Palantine.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Travis has devised all kinds of methods with which he can get clogged and pistols are quickly emerge. Famous is the scene where Bickle in front of a mirror, and the speech exercises that he wants to give during his attack as he is faced with someone who wants to keep him. Bickle: "You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? ... Oh, yeah? Ok. ", after which he draws his weapon.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Bickle to assassinate senator Palantine than an attempt to undertake during one of his public campaign speeches. However, he is spotted by someone from the secret service. (Bickle went a time already an interview with the secret agent to, informing to ways to work with the service.) After the secret service by him and then he has, flight, on the way to Sport (the pimp of Iris) and tries to kill him. Then he tries in the same building to remove Iris at a customer. A gunfight between Sport and his cronies against Bickle follows, with only Iris and Bickle survive.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">When the police arrive in the building where all this took place, is Bickle injured on a couch. It seems as if he dies. If he sees the police, he places his index finger to his head and pretends he shoots himself.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The media write about Bickle as if he were a hero is. When Bickle again picks up his job as a taxi driver, comes one night Betsy in his taxi. She makes comments about rescuing Iris and its fame by the media. Bickle is not on in, and it looks like he doesn't feel that he is a hero. About the end of this film is a lot of debate. ==Background Information<span class="mw-editsection" len="339" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">During the preparation for the movie Robert De Niro worked in a number of weekends as real taxi driver in New York. At that time he made the film with Bernardo Bertolucci , 1900and so flew back and forth between Rome and New York in order to be able to do all this.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The film is told from the point of view of Bickle. However, there is one scene added that (partly) breaks with this structure, namely the dance scene between Sport and Iris. To restore the structure is a shot of Bickle added, which shows that he is outside the building and look at the room where sports and Iris are located.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The shots are included in a taxi in the taxi that really drove around by the city. That meant that the camera in the taxi was posted along with Martin Scorsese, Michael Chapman (cinematographer), the actors and a soundman in the trunk. Scorsese wanted these scenes in the taxi make as realistic as possible, with New York as the backdrop; ' the city almost as a character '.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2U_flduhfss_1-0" len="175" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [1]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The steam runs through it in the beginning where the taxi shot is symbolic of hell, to the dangerous, dark atmosphere of the ghetto see.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2U_flduhfss_1-1" len="175" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [1]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Much of the dialogue in the film is a combination of the script and improvisation sessions during the preparations. Especially the character Tom is further developed by means of improvisation because this character was not fully written out in the script. This same process happened with the character Sport (Harvey Keitel), albeit in a different way. Originally this role does not have much dialogue (5 lines total), but Keitel chose to further deepen this role. A good example is the scene in which Travis Bickle enters into a conversation with Sports and Sport in the beginning of the meeting think Bickle is someone from the police. Extending and improvising of this role happened always in collaboration with Martin Scorsese, keeping in mind that it was important to monitor the base of the script and not too far away from to go.

<p lang="en" len="147" style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The famous scene in which Bickle for the mirror State and talking to herself ("Are you talking to me? '), for example, is created out of improvisation.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">In the film are three overheadshots, which slow-motion over a desk going. The first is in the Office of the taxi-rank, as Bickle sign up, the second the Office of Betsy, as he asks her out, the third is if he buys the weapons, in the hotel room.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2U_flduhfss_1-2" len="175" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [1]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">The character of Harvey Keitel (Sport) was originally black, such as in the script,. The creators felt it was irresponsible to let this so, however, social. The racism of Travis Bickle would be pronounced according to the creators can lead to riots in the cinemas.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Paul Schrader wrote the script with the idea of the woman (Betsy and Iris) as a beacon of good and beauty. Betsy like Madonna, Iris as whore.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2U_flduhfss_1-3" len="175" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [1]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Bickle refers in his statement "I'm God's Lonely Man" to the essay "God's Lonely Man" by Thomas Wolfedied in 1938, a writer. Wolfe writes In this Book:

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Paul Schrader, screenwriter of the movie, says he got the inspiration for the script when he had no place to stay a while after his marriage and a subsequent relationship were failed. He wandered but what around and realized that he had spoken and isolated for weeks no one had lived. As a result, he came up with the idea to use the taxi as a metaphor for loneliness. He then wrote the script in just 10 days time. "I wrote the script for myself, as therapy."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2U_flduhfss_1-4" len="175" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [1] ==Production<span class="mw-editsection" len="327" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[ Edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" len="1" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] == <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Translated from English
 * "The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence"
 * Translation: "the complete conviction of my life now rest on the belief that loneliness, a phenomenon that far from strange and unique, the Central and inevitable fact of human existence"

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">According to Scorsese, it was Brian de Palma who introduced him to Paul Schrader. In Scorsese on Scorsese describes the Director that much of the film is derived from his sense that movies are like dreams or drug-affected-by-musing. He wanted the Viewer as it were incubating with a ' limbo-able ', between awake and sleep. He calls Travis an "avenging angel", which through the streets of NY ' floats '. As for the camera work says Scorsese to have be inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" and Jack Hazan's "A Bigger Splash.".<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Ian_Christie_1989_2-0" len="181" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [2]  the pace of the shots served to keep the spectator ' out of balance ', whereby the attention wouldn't waver. There is a lot of religious symbolism in the film according to Scorsese. Travis can be regarded as a Saint, which is his body and soul would say weakness brings about and all. Bickle dies at the end almost while a girl red and the fight with evil so to goes, what can be considered as a ' Honorable ' death. .<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Ian_Christie_1989_2-1" len="181" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [2]  as Travis with Betsy coffee does he think of a song by Kris Kristofferson "The Pilgrim, Chapter 33": "he's a prohet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction-a walking contradiction." Travis takes her along to a Language of Love, educational, Swedish erotic film.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-3" len="163" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [3]  The film is during the summer included, during a heat wave and a strike of the garbage service. Because of the violence in the film if the film not be viewed by people under a certain age. To the atmosphere of the taxi to get as realistic as possible clogged the soundman in the trunk and Scorsese and his Assistant Michael Chapman on the ground at the back seat, not to block the light. For writing the script Paul Schrader had been inspired by the diaries of Arthur Bremer, who in 1972 presidential candidate George Wallace ) shot down<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-PBS_4-0" len="167" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[4]  , notes from the underground by Dostoevsky and The Nausea by Sartre. Schrader also used himself as inspiration: he was just a divorce, lived largely in his car and felt lonely, ' just as alienated as Bickle. ' Schrader made by Bickle one war veteran because that beautiful mixte with Bickle's paranoia and psychotic side, assuming the war Bickle's experiences made more intense and more threatening. Bickle hated the pimps and whores but drove anyway also in the districts where many were to be found, in order to feed his hatred. Other colleagues reason for example not in any district. .<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5" len="163" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;"> [5]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">De Niro fell 17 km off to the movie and repeatedly listened to an audio book by Arthur Bremer's diary. If he had of the free recordings of 1900 he went to a military base in Northern Italy, with Americans to include their accent and adopt it, because he thought that would be appropriate for Travis ' character. Bickle shaves his head bald to a mohawk if he intends to kill senator Palentine. This idea came from actor Victor Magnotta, Viet Nam veteran and a friend of Scorsese who had a (small) role in the film as a secret agent. "Magnotta talked about certain type of soldiers who entered the jungle: who had this hair style. The were usually commands, and other soldiers gave them the best sleeping places. " Jodie Foster was not first choice. Another actress, Mariel Hemingway refused the role under pressure from her family. After a few other rejections was Foster-then still officially considered a child actress (14)-chosen. In the original script was rung, the pimp black, but Scorsese thought the film than would be regarded as too racist. Actually had Schrader LA in mind, but because the taxis were more prominent was chosen in NY NY.