|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
Phil Martin
Taxi Driver-Close Reading
Martin Scorsese was born in New York on the 17th November 1942. ...
The sequence that I decided to analyse in Taxi Driver was 10 minutes at the beginning of the film from 6 minutes to 16minutes. ...
The sequence opens with a Point of View shot from Travis Bickle’s perspective as he slowly drives his taxi looking out onto the busy night-time sidewalk. ...
As the shot pans along the pavement with the movement of the taxi we hear the ‘voice over’ (VO) of Travis. ...
As the scene progresses we see various shots of Travis from inside the taxi as he drives. The relevance of framing these shots so that we can see the interior of the taxi is to create a ‘cage’. ...
The previous fluent chain of shots result in another POV shot as Travis watches the dark road roll under the taxi. ... At this the over the shoulder shot from the backseat of the taxi pans to the side as Travis pulls over to pick up a white man and a black whore and the camera pans back to face Travis as they get into the taxi. ...
This stylistic element is witnessed in Raging Bull when Vicky goes upstairs just before Jake finds out that his brother had sex with her, and also later on in Taxi Driver when Travis phones Betsy from the cabbie station. This shot seen later in Taxi Driver shows Travis talking on the phone to Betsy after she rejects him for taking her to a porno theatre. ...
After Travis takes the taxi back to the station his VO then states ‘Each night when I return the car to the garage I have to clean the cum of the backseat’. ...
Travis leaves the taxi station and we see him in a long shot as he walks down the road to the porno theatre. ... The food and money is exchanged over an open magazine that the woman was reading. ...
A few shots later after Travis drops off the fare at the ‘Hotel Olcott’ he pulls away and we are reunited with him in a medium long shot from inside a diner as he pulls up outside in his taxi. ... When he does Travis enters the diner and sits down with his fellow taxi drivers. ...
Scorsese enforces these representations in this way, however, there will usually be an opposite between the representations of women, Iris and Betsy (Taxi Driver), Alice and Flo (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore), but it may be that both representations are moulded into one character, Ginger (Casino), Vicky (Raging Bull), where at first these women will appear as angels but as the narrative progresses they turn out to be the complete opposite.
The sequence ends with another representation of New York City as Travis says how he heard that a taxi driver got half of his ear cut off. ...
Taxi Driver is arguably the centrepiece of Scorsese’s work, combining his major thematic and stylistic regularities with a hard-hitting combination of Film Noir and Western.
Approximate Word count = 3102
Approximate Pages = 12.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|