Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver | 1976 | 18 | Dir. Martin Scorcese | US | IMDb 8.2 | English | 114 mins

Taxi Driver (1976) is the members’ choice for HFS’s 71^stseason.

Members are warned that the film features some extreme violence as well as child prostitution.

The film is set in mid 1970’s New York. It follows ex-marine and Vietnam war veteran, Travis Bickle, played by an early thirties Robert De Niro, whose performance as the increasingly disturbed Bickle earned him an Oscar nomination.

Bickle takes a job as a night shift taxi driver, a role which is well suited to his insomnia, but which exposes him to the seedy side of New York life. Bickle is a loner, who has particular difficulty in forming relationships with women. He becomes infatuated with Betsy, a campaign worker for senator and presidential hopeful, Charles Palantine. He takes Betsy on a date to see a porn film, not having any appreciation of the inappropriateness of that nor of her likely reaction to it. Her subsequent rejection of him further accelerates Bickle’s sense of isolation, anger and mental deterioration

Bickle’s response, like that of many subsequent alienated young men, is to prepare for violent retribution: he starts a program of intense physical conditioning, which includes shadow boxing and weapons drills. He also buys some handguns from a black-market gun dealer.

The only questions are who Bickle will target and why. The final twenty minutes of the film answer that question. There is little logic or coherence in Bickle’s fragmented, irrational and often contradictory reasoning for his actions, much of which we learn through Bickle’s narration of a diary that he keeps. Having failed to hit his intended target, the focus of Bickle’s violence then becomes those associated with Iris, a 12-year-old child prostitute Bickle has befriended, played by 12-year-old Jodie Foster in a remarkably assured performance, which was also recognised in a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.

Martin Scorsese won the Palme d’Or for Taxi Driver at Cannes in 1976, and the film is widely considered by many film critics to be one of the best films ever made. The film was also a commercial success. However, the film is often remembered for Jodie Foster’s role as Iris and her subsequent stalking whilst a freshman at Yale in 1980-81 by John Hinkley Junior, who subsequently went on to attempt to assassinate President Regan in March 1981. Hinkley had seen Taxi Driver multiple times and had become obsessed with Foster, attempting to contact her many times and claimed that his motive for the assassination attempt was to impress Foster. Although Foster has, over the years, said in interviews that she did not find the role traumatic, understood that it was an acting job and that it was professionally important for her, many will be left to question whether casting such a young child in such a role, could ever be appropriate.

·       Screen 1

·       Doors open 7pm (or when Odeon staff permit entry)

·       Welcome from our chair Paula Stott @ 7.30pm

·       Free parking after 6pm if you DISPLAY an orange parking voucher, available from Odeon staff

·       Unreserved seating

·       We invite every viewer to score the film afterwards using a token system in the lobby

·      DVD available for members to borrow