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Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1998.3.S39 A3 1989
In this chapter from a book on Scorsese films, Martin Scorsese offers his own commentary on the film Taxi Driver. Scorsese discusses the early stages of production and how Brian De Palma introduced him to Paul Schrader. Scorsese included original drawings done by himself for the climactic ending. He talks about how much of Taxi Driver arose from his feeling that movies are like dreams, or like taking dope and that he tried to induce the feeling of being almost awake. Scorsese calls Travis an “avenging angel” floating through the streets of New York City, which was meant to represent all cities. Scorsese calls attention to improvisation in Taxi Driver’s many scenes, such as in the scene between De Niro and Cybill Shepherd in the coffee-shop. The director cites Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man and Jack Hazan’s A Bigger Splash as inspiration for his camerawork in Taxi Driver. He also confirms the fact that Arthur Bremer and Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground influenced Paul Schrader’s script.
Reading Scorsese’s perspective on his own film provides very interesting insight into Taxi Driver and more information about the mysterious Travis. It was crucial to Travis Bickle’s character that he was a war veteran, making his experiences after the war more intense, threatening, and filled with paranoia. Bickle chose to drive his taxi anywhere in the city as a way to feed his hate. Scorsese highlights the religious symbology in Taxi Driver comparing him to a saint who wants to clean up life and his mind. The violence at the end of the film is somewhat justified in the sense that Scorsese wanted Travis to kill all those people to stop them once and for all. Travis attempts suicide at the end of the movie as a way to mimic the Samurai’s “death with honour” principle.
tagged arthur avenging_angelnew_york_city bremer camerawork dostoevsky dreams martin_scorsese note_from_underground paul_schrader taxi_driver travis_bickle by feldman5 ...and 1 other person ...on 10-APR-08
Swensen, Andrew J. "THE ANGUISH OF GOD'S LONELY MEN: DOSTOEVSKY'S UNDERGROUND MAN AND SCORSESE'S TRAVIS BICKLE" Renascence; Summer2001, Vol. 53 Issue 4, p267, 20p
In this article, Swensen examines the relationship between Scorsese’s Travis Bickle and Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. Swensen points out that both works depict a persona which is alternatively a variation, a corruption, and an inversion of the idea of the hero; transforming the hero into a concept of the “antihero”. Swensen argues that both Scorsese and Dostoevsky construct a narrative of the isolated and anonymous individual amidst a dense labyrinthine city with its frenzied temptation and vice. The overcrowding, exploitation, greed, and scum of society create a social norm of cynical indifference morally corrupting the substance of the individual, as evident in Travis Bickle.
Swensen compares Dostoevsky’s Underground Man to Scorsese’s Travis Bickle, both protagonists of their novels, as they see a decaying metropolitan society as a “hell on earth”. Similar to how Dostoevsky places the frame of a third-person “editor” around the hero’s text, Swensen argues that Scorsese uses diegetic and extra-diegetic camera perspectives to mimic Travis’ eyes and vision. Swensen gives us a more immediate connection between the two in the fact that Scorsese approached Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver’s screenwriter) with the intention of adapting Dostoevsky’s Note from Underground into a film. Swensen also talks about how Taxi Driver reflects the influence of French Existentialism, and the mise-en-scene, lighting, and setting, particularly in the murk and darkness of the film, owe a debt to film noir.
In Swensen’s view, the front seat of Travis’ taxi and his dilapidated apartment become the epicenter and the locus of isolation for Travis. These settings become the “underground” and stand opposed to the space of society, the alien and hostile “aboveground”. Swensen calls attention to Scorsese’s depiction of Travis’ apartment, which parallels the developing insanity of a character like Travis Bickle. His minimally furnished but cluttered apartment reflects Travis’ mental disruption. From a camera pan across the apartment, we see cracked paint, scattered books, a dangling and bare light bulb, a small table covered with pill bottles, a metal cot, and numerous posters from slow Palantine’s political campaign. This imagery renders an unsettling glimpse of the anti-social, alienated, and maniacal anxiety emerging from within Travis, which surfaces in the climatic ending.
tagged dostoevsky french_existentialism martin_scorsese note_from_underground paul_schrader scorsese taxi_driver travis_bickle by feldman5 ...on 10-APR-08