Taxi Driver
The movie Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese, "may be the greatest first person character study ever committed to film" according to an interview of Quentin Tarantino. Within the realm of film noir there is interplay with light and darkness and there is the classic main character. The main character within every film noir has a couple key components that are common within many of the antiheroes of the genre. The film noir anti-hero, or corrupted hero, is most known for their descent moralistically or in the case of Travis Bickle, mentally. The conventions used to display this mental ambiguity is via the mis en scene, cinematography, and editing. Most normal formal elements that are used in film noir are within Taxi Driver. The hero, most of the time in film noir, is a washed up hero who is preconditioned to descend into darkness in order to let justice prevail. In Taxi Driver, Scorsese doesn’t have Travis Bickle descend in terms of moral ambiguity but rather turns Travis from oddball to murderer. Travis’ dissension mentally is synonymous to a film noir hero’s dissension morally. 

Like many film noir heroes, Travis seems predisposed on becoming a psychopathic killer. Being an ex Marine, it seems he needs a lot of time to keep himself busy, and as a result is a complete loner. The mis en scene, editing, and cinematography of the movie show the audience many scenes that connote to his later and more troubling behavior. The lighting is a part of mis en scene that permeates within the film, because it is film noir, and connotes that Travis is psychotic beforehand or is predisposed to it. Near the beginning the audience sees nothing but darkness around Travis’s eyes and not only that but they are then later drowned in a red light. All the audience can see are Travis’ eyes for a good fifteen seconds. Eyes are a very striking thing and to cover them in darkness and red light poses an ominous picture. The reasoning behind this is to show the darkness that is already brewing within Travis. Another aspect of mis en scene is the actual props and what they connote. Travis’ "office" or his apartment is a symbol more or less of what he is, which according to the screenplay itself, "Is unusual, to say the least: A ratty old mattress is thrown against one wall. The floor is littered with old newspapers, worn and unfolded streets maps and pornography. There is no furniture other than the rickety chair and table. A beat-up portable TV rests on an upright melon crate. The red silk mass in another corner looks like a Vietnamese flag. Indecipherable words, figures, numbers are scribbled on the plain plaster walls. Ragged black wires dangle from the wall where the telephone once hung" (Taxi Driver 8).
At the beginning of the movie there is rain upon the city and all Travis’ voice over says is that "someday he wants the rain to wash all the scum away" and as much as this sounds noble out of context, it carries a more eerie weight within the movie as it foreshadows his own psychotic actions against the pimps. Also when he meets Palentine in his cab, the senator asks him "what’s the one thing in the world that bugs him the most?" and as they’re all in darkness he says he "flushed down the toilet" and cleaned by force almost. This is both a message of politics and how his antiheroic actions eventually clean some of the streets faster than the senator who always answers, "it will take some time" to every one of his questions. Everyone is in the darkness and so everyone has bad intentions at heart. 

The editing also connotes that he is a lonely man that is in search of love of some sort. In a voice over he is saying how he met Betsy and how she is beautiful. The camera cuts to many different crowds of people and there are people walking everywhere. The audience is drawn. It is daylight for the first time and the audience wants to know what sort of woman would attract Travis? Cut from one crowd (there’s no one) cut to another crowd (there is still no one) and then the last cut she comes out at the last minute. She comes like an angel out of the right side of the screen with a bright white blouse. Betsy comes out of nowhere and the camera follows her just as Travis’s eyes would, which in my opinion is a nice use of cinematography. Travis begins to fill that empty void in his life with Betsy. 

In many noir films the main character finds that there is temptation within the drug or the money or whatever is being offered to them. The temptation in Taxi Driver isn’t drugs or money, but rather love. At first Travis was satisfying himself with empty love by going to see the pornographic movies but now there is someone new, someone to go into the light for. For most of the movie the cinematography focuses on just Betsy’s face and so we are forced to make eye contact with her and try and sympathize with Travis. The amount of point of view shots whenever the audience sees Betsy or anyone else for that matter are the reason why this may be considered a great first person case study. The audience is supposed to empathize with the person they "know" the most. 

The breakup between Travis and Betsy is what drives him off the edge and begins his descent towards mental instability and psychotic rampage. Since Travis is already a weird guy, he of course thinks that taking a woman to an adult movie theater is the perfect way to woo her and of course, understandably, she breaks up with Travis. As Travis talks to her for what seems to be the last time (according to the voice over), the camera shifts from him being in the light with a telephone to an empty and narrow hall leading towards the darkness outside. He walks into the empty hall and gradually walks away from the audience and into the darkness itself. Eventually, in his own apartment all his flowers rot and gradually die. This visual symbolism almost explains itself for how his love for her is dead and she is now viewed by Travis as a cold-hearted individual, like everyone else in the world. The smell of the flowers sickens him and he starts to become a misanthrope. He finally descends when he meets Iris and has this instinct to protect her and feels that it is his calling upon earth to get this child back to her family. After almost running her over, Travis feels the need to stalk her, which seems to be his usual tactic, but this time the feeling is different. Eventually he goes to a local weapons dealer and acquires a 44 magnum. As he takes out the gun the audience is abruptly welcomed by screaming children in the background, which possibly foreshadows later events. Travis practices before the mirror and does the famous and eloquent soliloquy "You Talkin’ to Me?" he says "you’re dead" and yet another girl screams in the background. The girls in the background symbolize the intense and yet shocking episode that will come later for Iris. 

Darkness descends into the next scene as Travis pulls into a supermarket. The small supermarket gets robbed and this is where the cracks turn from internal to external. As the robber points a gun towards the cashier, Travis whips out a gun says "look here" and then proceeds to shoot the robber in the face. Part of mis en scene is the musical numbers that play within the scene. In this particular scene there is a song called "Late for the Sky" which talks about why Travis does what he does. "How long have I been drifting alone through the night/How long have I been dreaming I could make it right" (1.18-19). 

One of the most striking scenes within the whole screenplay is the dance that Sport has with Iris. There is darkness amidst a crimson light pouring everywhere. The crimson light gives the scene a darker lusty feeling and the jazz music that once served as background music for Travis’s love music, now serves for Sport's pedophilia. The cinematography makes this more disturbing as well, which focuses on the hands. At first the audience is drawn to an insert of the record player. As the music plays the camera scrolls up almost seductively to a close up Sport’s face as he says "I need you." As they dance, the camera doesn’t cut but rather it just leaves the audience there to view this more striking scene. Immediately the scene cuts to a series of shots. There is darkness all around except for a window where we see Travis shooting his guns. It’s almost looks like he’s shooting Sport, which again makes for great foreshadowing. 

The end of the movie is where most of the technical aspects of the movie run wild. There is a noticeably deeper contrast within light and darkness within the last ten minutes of the movie. Everything looks grainier as well. The light is more emphasized and the darkness is more pronounced. Everything is harder to see but at the same time everything that is full of light draws the audience in. After shooting Sport, he goes into Iris’s apartment and shoots the old man in the corridor. There are three rapid cuts that go up the stairs and seemingly follow the noises that the 44 magnum made during the shooting. The director then cuts to an overhead shot of the corridor. Travis travels into the darkness at the end of the hall, shoots Sport and continues to shoot him even after he is clearly dead. His descent into darkness is palpable. He shoots the old man but the old man climbs up the stairs, screaming that he’s going to kill Travis and then suddenly everything shifts into slow motion. Following the chaos that ensues, the cinematography then allows the viewers to see the "overhead slow motion tracking shot," which "surveys the damage." (106 Taxi Driver) 

Travis is a psychotic killer who just happened to do the right thing. The only hint the audience gets that Travis is still not normal is at the end of the film there is a sudden boost in speed. As Travis pulls away his eyes quickly turn towards his rear-view mirror, the saturation of the colors brightens and there are weird noises in the background (like radio interference). But this doesn’t take away from the fact that this is indeed a film noir. According to the screenwriter Paul Schrader, film noir is a culmination of different stylistics. "The majority of scenes are lit for night" which most of them are within the movie, "compositional tension is preferred to physical action." (Film Noir 235) This is true seeing that it was a gradual descent in Travis’ mind that brought him to the violence in the end. Before that there was no real physical violence within the movie. Some of the themes that go into film noir, that are also in Taxi Driver, are the heroes within film noir "emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities, and insecurity then submerge these self-doubts into mannerisms and style" (Film Noir 237). Within Taxi Driver, Travis at first is devoid of having love and then simultaneously loses love. For a part of the movie Travis goes to his friend Wizard and asks if he is in the right place. He doesn’t want to be a part of the taxi driving business for long. He wants to do something else which reflects him not having clear priority. The reason why this movie is such a remarkable one is because it shows the film noir style with modern day conventions and uses the new technology not to hamper his own creativity but rather to enhance his own dark and lusty feel. The movie Taxi Driver brings a genre long neglected back with a new fresh feel.

References
Schrader, Paul. "Notes on Film Noir." Film Genre Reader lll (2003): 229-242 
Tarantino, Quentin. "Tarantino on Taxi Driver." Tarantino Takes Over Sky Movies. 16, 
August 2009. 
Browne, Jackson. Late for the Sky, 1974. Asylum Records, 1976.
Making Taxi Driver. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1976.
Schrader, Paul. Taxi Driver. Columbia Pictures Corporation: 1976