`How long have I been driftin' alone through the night' - the defining scene of this film

Rating: 10/10 (6 December 2001)

One scene above any other defines what Taxi Driver (1976) is all about, many of the scenes of the film have been talked about and mulled over in order to understand just why the film is as important and powerful today as it was when it first hit the screens back in the mid seventies, but no other scene taps directly into the pain and emotion the character is going through. The scene in question in the scene in which deranged cabbie Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) sits in his filthy apartment, shirt undone, magnum in hand, captivated by an episode of "American Bandstand", the barrel of his gun aimed at the young, predominantly black dancers. The obsession and the pain on his face, not out of blind racism as others have commented, but out of jealousy, the fact that the young couples are together and happy. Travis watches the scene alone, his attempt at a relationship with Betsy (Cybill Shepard) pretty much none existent, his loneliness becoming uncontrollable. This scene takes place (if I remember correctly) shortly after the scene in which Travis shoots the robber at the convenience store, his anger and mixed up sense of redemption are seemed to be momentarily healed by the violence, the sense of purpose the almost vigilante assault instated upon him. This is a turning point in the character's life, the calm before the storm if you will, and the music makes this message all the more clear. The words of Jackson Browne in his song "Late for the Sky" ("How long have I been drifting alone through the night"), of course Travis is going through as stage of self reflection, the song continues - "Awake again I can't pretend/And I no I'm alone/And close to the end"... Travis is at his end, he can't take any more of the insomnia and the self-hatred that will all be released in the cathartic blood bath at the final, this is the scene in which Travis finally makes up his mind to go ahead with the "bad ideas" that are rolling around in his head. This is the reason Taxi Driver looses none of it's power after nearly thirty years, the character of Bickle has something everyone can identify with, who hasn't felt more alone in the biggest city imaginable, Travis isn't mad, he's just been pushed too far by his feelings, his want to be "someone" more than the average Joe on the street. Plus the structure of the film works fantastically with Paul Schrader's writing, the continuity changes in Travis' hair style means we have no idea just how long a time period the film takes up, Scorsese's use of repetitious imagery as Travis cruises the streets in the yellow cab, bring home the mundane-ness of the job, his street level photography and composition, as both writer and director trick us into following this at first eccentric and charming character, into one of the most furious blood stained finals ever committed to film. Taxi Driver is till the best representation of loneliness and urban alienation we have ever seen, and in these less than cynical times, may ever see again. 10/10