TAXI DRIVER

• We can identify 4 distinct scenes.

The first is the time of day where the taxi driver is at home, he tells the details of these days of work (with his schedules), it is quite dark at home.

In the second scene, we can see the driver aboard his taxi on the streets of New York, he compares people to animals.

In this second scene the atmosphere is heavy.

The third scene is when the driver takes a man and a young woman who is surely a prostitute in his car.

The fourth and last scene represents the end of the day of work and the moment when he must "wash" his car and put it back in the garage.

• Most of the sequence is presented from the point of view of the taxi driver.

He can be seen especially at the beginning of the sequence when he presents his work, his schedules but also when he goes to the streets of New York and describes his feelings about the population.

• There are meaningful visual ideas that support the dramatic power of the sequence.

The staging of Taxi Driver is entirely dedicated to underline the subjectivity of the story, to place the spectator completely in the skin of the driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro). A process that starts from the film's credits, night vision and blurred world from the cabin of a taxi, and then continues throughout.

Slow down, close-ups, internal point of view ... Scorsese multiplies style effects.

A fine example of painting an inner world, in this case that of Travis, a man adrift, living a banal life, repetitive, mostly nocturnal, the vision blurred and will arrange with the law; very close-ups on the eyes of the hero and against the field, what he sees: abundance of blur (night, rain, smoke: visual interference).

• The musical theme of Travis, symbolizes this drift and this night context: jazzy atmosphere, rhythmic freedom of the saxophone (rhythmic blur), floating above a repetitive harmony both banal and spicy.

• we see a penetrating and somewhat agonizing atmosphere of the poor and dilapidated neighborhoods of New York; where vice and debauchery reign.

• For me, this sequence is rather static because there is a real slowness in the actions. In fact, the slowness of the film contributes to the atmosphere that dominates it. She seems to embody the loneliness and emptiness of Travis, as well as the voiceover that at times reveals her disgust for what passes before her eyes and draws the viewer into the interiority of the character.

• The relationship between the main protagonists and New York City is not necessarily good.

      Taxi driver Travis Bickle likens people in the street to animals coming out at night.

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