DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese
PRODUCER: Michael Phillips, Julia Phillips
PRODUCTION CO: Columbia
SCREENPLAY: Paul Schrader
PHOTOGRAPHY: Michael Chapman
EDITORS: Marcia Lucas, Tom Rolf, Melvin Shapiro
MUSIC: Bernard Herrmann
WITH: Robert De Niro (Travis Bickle), Jodie Foster (Iris Steensma), Cybill Shepherd (Betsy), Harvey Keitel (Matthew 'Sport' Higgins), Albert Brooks (Tom), Leonard Harris (Senator Charles Palantine), Peter Boyle (Wizard), Steven Prince (Easy Andy)

FESTIVALS/AWARDS: Palme d'Or, Cannes 1976

REVIEW

“Martin Scorsese’s unflinching plunge into the darkest recesses of the human soul feels painfully relevant. In anti-hero Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) we see traits of what would become the archetypal online troll – he’s bitter, reactionary and self-involved, describing himself as ‘God’s lonely man’.

But still, Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader never treat him with anything less than the utmost empathy. This is a man scarred by war, perplexed by the permissive society and desperate to leave his mark on a world that barely acknowledges his existence. Travis may wear his isolation proudly, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear.
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Forty years on, Taxi Driver remains almost impossibly perfect: it’s hard to think of another film that creates and sustains such a unique, evocative tone, of dread blended with pity, loathing, savage humour and a scuzzy edge of New York cool. Bernard Herrmann’s score sounds like the city breathing, ominous and clammy, while De Niro’s performance is a masterclass in restraint and honesty… This is still one of the pinnacles of cinema.”

— Time Out
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“Taxi Driver was a powerfully summarizing work. It synthesized noir, neorealist, and New Wave stylistics; it assimilated Hollywood’s recent vigilante cycle, drafting then-déclassé blaxploitation in the service of a presumed tell-it-like-it-is naturalism that, predicated on a frank, unrelenting representation of racism, violence, and misogyny, was even more racist, violent, and misogynist than it allowed…

Taxi Driver was not just a hit but, like Psycho or Bonnie and Clyde, an event in American popular culture — perhaps even an intervention. Inspired by one failed political assassination (the 1972 shooting of presidential hopeful George Wallace), it inadvertently motivated another (the 1981 attempt on President Ronald Reagan). The movie further established its 33-year-old director as both Hollywood’s designated artist and, after Taxi Driver was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes, an international sensation — the decisive influence on neo–New Wave filmmakers as varied as Spike Lee, Wong Kar-wai, and Quentin Tarantino…

The world of Taxi Driver is recognizably ours. Libidinal politics, celebrity worship, sexual exploitation, the fetishization of guns and violence, racial stereotyping, the fear of foreigners — not to mention the promise of apocalyptic religion — all remain. Taxi Driver lives. See it again. And try to have a nice day.”

— J Hoberman, Village Voice

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Hamilton 
Monday, 06 March, 6.30pm

​​Dunedin   
Wednesday, 22 March, 7.30pm

New Plymouth
​Wednesday, 12 April, 6.00pm

Queenstown
Tuesday, 25 April, 8.15pm

Tauranga
​Tuesday, 16 May, 6.00pm

​Nelson  
Tuesday, 13 June, 6:00pm

Auckland  
Monday, 10 July, 6.15pm
​This screening is open to the public, all tickets $10 (AFS members free). Tickets and memberships on sale now at Academy Cinemas

Bigger Picture Oamaru
Thursday, 27 July, 7.00pm

Canterbury     
Monday, 07 August, 7.00pm

​Whanganui  
Monday, 25 September, 7.00pm

​​Wellington   
Monday, 20 November, 6:15pm

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