Taxi Driver (1976)
- To accurately portray their role in Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro spent weeks conducting hands-on research and rehearsing directly with director Martin Scorsese.
- Despite initial studio skepticism, Taxi Driver went on to gross over $28,600,000 worldwide.
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American psychological drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. Robert De Niro stars as Travis Bickle, a mentally unstable Vietnam veteran working as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, who becomes increasingly disgusted by the perceived moral decay of the city around him โ the prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, and corrupt politicians who populate his nightly routes. Travis's alienation deepens as he is rejected by Betsy, an elegant campaign worker played by Cybill Shepherd, and he redirects his obsessive energy toward two missions: assassinating a presidential candidate and rescuing Iris, a twelve-year-old prostitute played by Jodie Foster, from her pimp Sport, played by Harvey Keitel.
Taxi Driver is widely considered one of the greatest American films ever made, a searing character study that captured the psychological damage of the Vietnam era and the urban decay of 1970s New York with unflinching intensity. Robert De Niro's preparation for the role was legendary โ he obtained a real taxi license and drove a cab through New York for weeks to absorb the experience, and his improvised "You talkin' to me?" mirror monologue became one of cinema's most iconic moments. Paul Schrader's screenplay drew from his own experience of depression, insomnia, and alienation to create a portrait of urban loneliness that remains viscerally relevant.
Bernard Herrmann's haunting jazz score, his final work before his death, perfectly captured the film's nocturnal, hallucinatory atmosphere. Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and earned four Academy Award nominations.
