I knew I had to write a scene analysis on films I enjoy, and I am glad I now have a second chance on writing a second blog on a different film. Taxi Driver is definitely on my top 3 list of favorite films to watch over and over again. And now that I have ventured into cinema, its gets better every time. Having done some research on Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, there was more than a brilliant script, more like an interesting story about the writer, Paul Schrader. But I’ll get back to the good bit later on!

This is one of the most famous and often imitated soliloquies in film history, according to Roger Ebert. It occurs shortly after Travis has bought his guns and has decided to discipline his body, and directly after the scene where Travis gets himself tagged by one of Palatine’s Secret Service agents. Travis says “these” macho lines to a mirror, while drawing his gun as quickly as he can to threaten the imaginary person talking to him. There is a sense of loneliness that can be felt through this scene. De Niro’s character, Travis, seems to be in somewhat isolated in his own world. The imaginary image of a macho man is well portrayed by Travis. Travis is so lonely that he is the only one there, forced to speak to his reflection. In the scene, Travis acts as if people commonly talk to him in a manner that merits an aggressive response. However, we clearly see how Travis looks at himself in the mirror and asks: “Are you talking to me?” But is that what’s happening? If we start to dissect the scene more closely, we find that it is not so. Travis wears the sliding pistol on his right arm, but when he delivers the speech, the pistol is on his left arm . Therefore, it’s Travis’ reflection that we are watching, it’s his reflection which makes it seem like Travis listens to himself, he talks to himself, he talks to us, he talks to his mirror

When he first conceived the idea for Taxi Driver back in 1973, Paul Schrader was in a bad way. “At the time I wrote it, I was very enamoured of guns, I was very suicidal, I was drinking heavily, I was obsessed with pornography in the way a lonely person is, and all those elements are up front in the script”.  Schrader adds: “One day, I went to the emergency room in serious pain, and it turned out I had an ulcer. While I was in the hospital talking to the nurse, I realised I hadn’t spoken to anyone in two or three weeks. It really hit me, an image that I was like a taxi driver, floating around in this metal coffin in the city, seemingly in the middle of people but absolutely, totally alone.“

Schrader famously wrote only “Travis talks to himself in the mirror” in the script, and De Niro even more famously improvised the “You talkin’ to me?” sequence that followed, borrowing the routine from local stand-up comic’s act. It seemed like Scorsese shot the scene with heavy symbolism, evoking how Travis has indeed split between the image he has of himself in the mirror—what Scorsese calls, an “avenging angel”—and his real Self that has lost touch.