[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Taxi Driver : Travis Bickle
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American motion picture drama directed by Martin Scorsese. It is widely considered one of the greatest American films, praised for its strong performances and gritty realism. The film also made stars out of both its lead actors, Robert De Niro, and Jodie Foster, who was only thirteen years old when the movie was released and twelve during filming.
Historically, the film appeared after a decade of war in Vietnam, and after the disgraceful Watergate crisis and President Nixon's resignation.
"Taxi Driver" shouldn't be taken as a New York film; it's not about a city but about the weathers of a man's soul, and out of all New York he selects just those elements that feed and reinforce his obsessions. The man is Travis Bickle, ex-Marine, veteran of Vietnam, composer of dutiful anniversary notes to his parents, taxi driver, and killer.
Today, Martin Scorsese is considered by the majority of film critics as the greatest living American director. In a survey Taxi Driver became the emblem of this negative criticism.
This film is about loneliness, about the isolation of a man in a society full of scum. His objective is to finish with the scum of the streets. The film opens with Vietnam War veteran Travis Bickle getting a job as a cab driver in New York. Unable to sleep, he works nights in the worst places of the city. During the day, he watches television, goes to porno flicks and admires from afar Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a beautiful blond woman whom he calls his angel.
In many ways, the film has become prophetic and mirrors the violence of contemporary news headlines.
Notoriously, the film is linked to and may have triggered the political assassination (copy-cat) attempt by inconspicuous John Hinckley on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, illuminating his dangerou....
