In her rave review of Taxi Driver, esteemed American film critic Pauline Kael said "Martin Scorsese achieves the quality of trance in some scenes, and the whole movie has a sense of vertigo." Comment briefly here on the way Scorsese uses the aesthetics of cinema (sound, cinematography, mise-en-scene, etc.) to achieve this "sense of vertigo." Focus on one aesthetic that you feel helped create this trance-like mood. Support your chosen aesthetic with an example of how it was employed during a specific moment in the film.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
TAXI DRIVER
In her rave review of Taxi Driver, esteemed American film critic Pauline Kael said "Martin Scorsese achieves the quality of trance in some scenes, and the whole movie has a sense of vertigo." Comment briefly here on the way Scorsese uses the aesthetics of cinema (sound, cinematography, mise-en-scene, etc.) to achieve this "sense of vertigo." Focus on one aesthetic that you feel helped create this trance-like mood. Support your chosen aesthetic with an example of how it was employed during a specific moment in the film.
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I believe the opening sequence of this film acts like a hypnotic pendulum slowly pulling the audience into a sub hypnotic condition, and holding them there for the entire duration of the film. The quiet and repetitive soundtrack in sync with the continuous images of New York streets at night lulls the unsuspecting viewer into a dream like state, which allows the absurd and preposterous mentality of Travis Bickle to appear rational and justified. Just as in a dream, the thoughts and events that occur before one awakes seem to be normal and indistinguishable from reality. It is only after you awaken that the absurdity of the dream becomes apparent
The first shot of the film with the smoke rising from the manhole cover and Bickle’s taxi driving through it in slow motion is in itself a blatant indication that this is a world removed from traditional reality. It is a nightmare that holds us in a confusing and often time frightening look into our own subconscious, like a dream that we cannot awake from.
Matt Fagerholm
I know I watched Taxi Driver last Tuesday September 25th in room 302, but for some reason, I feel like I haven’t. It all feels like some crazed, hallucinogenic dream. The sensation of vertigo sometimes occurs during my dreams, as surrounding events pass by in slow motion. I float in a trace-like state as I’m pulled toward some sort of threatening void. This often culminates in me waking up with a violent start—much like Harvey Keitel at the beginning of Mean Streets.
There are several events like that in Taxi Driver, but for some reason, the film hypnotized me so thoroughly that my memories of it are as fragmented and blurry as remembered images from a dream. The cinematography by Michael Chapman certainly is one of the cinematic elements chiefly responsible for creating the illusion of vertigo. I remember a moment in a restaurant that illustrates Travis Bickle’s paranoid psyche so strongly that it distinctly resembles a dream. His racism causes his eyes to dart toward any “black man” who shoots him the slightest glance. A man is seen laughing at him from a table in slow motion. Outside the restaurant, another man passes Travis. Their eyes meet for a brief moment that wouldn’t seem very menacing if it wasn’t shot in slow motion. This technique allows the audience to focus in on the image to draw meanings from it that are linked closer to Travis’s warped worldview than any sense of grounded reality.
These scenes are more evocative of a trance than anything else, but the real moment of vertigo occurs when Travis drops a substance (Tylenol? Pills? My memory fails me!) into a glass. His drink (water I assume) fizzes to an alarming volume that drowns out any sound around Travis. This seems to be symbolic of the violence building within Travis, which is threatening to consume his very being (kind of like the train blaring outside the restaurant in The Godfather, foreshadowing Al Pacino’s killing of the mobsters sitting around his table). Yet what is most striking about the sequence is how the camera pulls into the fizzing cup, making Travis seem as if he is on the brink of falling into its chaotic confines. It is one of the most effective depictions of vertigo since Hitchcock created his infamous zoom.
Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER is unlike many films because of its unique narrative form. The film stars Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle who we learn at the beginning of the film cannot sleep at night. As the film goes on and on, the viewer in turn starts to feel that way. We are not sure what is a dream and what is real. It’s the films editing that really helps give the film that surreal quality.
One of the first things a person might notice while watching the film is that there is no plot, at least in the sense of a start to finish one. The film instead seems to go in different directions and at random, it’s dominated by many subplots that don’t all get tied up at the same time. The film starts with DeNiro getting hired as a cab driver, but 15 minutes in, the film begins to seem like a boy meets girl tale. Everything revolves around DeNiro and Shepherd at that point. There is never a point during the time that their characters are dating when we see Travis driving the cab, getting closer to snapping. And then later in the film, the story seems to be about DeNiro saving Jodie Fosters character. It’s not something an audience is used to seeing. In real life, many things are going on in our lives at once; we are constantly being bombarded by different people. And so when we see a film, we expect to see a character have multiple things going on. As moviegoers, we expect to see a character who has multiple problems, but that can all be solved by the same solution, and at the end of the film. TAXI DRIVER instead seems to play each subplot by itself. The only other time people are used to seeing that is in there dreams.
Travis Bickle complains of not being able to sleep, and throughout the film, he becomes sicker and sicker looking. When a person doesn’t get enough sleep, they often have trouble getting a solid grip on what is a dream and what is reality. The editing of TAXI DRIVER instills the same feeling in its viewers and is a great way of allowing the audience to feel as nauseated and surreal as Travis Bickle does.
I’m a huge fan of the sound design in Scorsese’s films, and I believe that this is one of the areas of his films that are not talked about enough. I believe that there are many aesthetic choices (the setting, the cinematography, the editing, etc) that help create that sense of vertigo that the reviewer says she is experiencing while watching Taxi Driver.
However, I believe the musical score, which purpose in a film is to create and enhance the emotional quotient of a film is a huge reason we feel an almost profound dizziness while watching Taxi Driver. There are various moments in the film when we hear Bernard Herrmann’s surreal, beautifully drawing musical score atop the visual aesthetics that help vividly increase the sense of disillusionment and unsteadiness that we the audience feels and the protagonist of the film Travis Bickle is also feeling. Wow.
There is a scene in Taxi Driver where Scorsese just sets up the camera with a straight forward shot of the front of the taxi cab with De Niro at the wheel and Scorsese in back and De Niro just does his thing. This shot in this scene sets up the feeling of vertigo for the character of Travis and it can be seen through De Niro’s acting. First of all, Travis is trapped in this box within the taxi. He has no place to go. This man, Scorsese’s character, is behind him, over his shoulder and there is no direct vision between the two.
This man starts talking about taking a gun and plowing his wife’s head off because she is cheating on him with a black man. A sense of vertigo, along with a combination of the shots and framing, can be seen just welling up in De Niro’s face. He listens to this guy, behind him, talking about blowing a person’s head off. Travis must have a million things on his mind, but can’t go anywhere or do anything because he is trapped in this box which is set up for the audience very well through the three shots of medium shot of Scorsese in back, close up of De Niro in front, and wide shot of both trapped in this taxi. Of course, De Niro adds to it making it a thousand times more effective through his facial reactions.
Brandon Schiffli
The opening sequence to me in Taxi Driver sets the stage. It’s a shadow, a mystery how Travis Bickle is going to react to any situation like the fog in the beginning it seems elusive. Right after that beginning part we see through the windshield a dizzying strobe effect of the city lights, the confusion of the city. Within the opening sequence we also see Travis’s eyes which are an extreme close-up. The lights change from red to green, two colors that are used throughout the film.
Another element of the film that makes it feel like vertigo is the back and forth of the film and how the characters or taxi will more left then right almost religiously. There is not one single direction but a back and forth, see saw motion to the film that gets tighter and tighter as the film progresses to the ending.
There was a scene that gave me a sense of vertigo and completely separated me from the real world. The scene where Robert DeNiro goes to call Betsy from a pay phone to ask her out again after the failed date they had at the porno theater. He is talking on the phone and the camera begins to pan to the right to show an open door to the city. All of a sudden, I was put into a daze. I recall ambient noise and him trying to talk her into another date and asking if he can call her again. The audience is staring out the door looking at really nothing as words are still being heard. You know he’s still standing there even though we can no longer see him. We hear his voice, but you continue to stare out the door. It was a powerful thing done with the camera.
I also noticed a lot of close ups. It made you feel more of a relation to the character. You become more attuned to what he is feeling. You may not agree with his actions and thoughts of what he does, but you have empathy for him.
Vlady Oszkiel
Taxi Driver could have almost worked as a love story. And this is something I discovered when watching this film for the third time last Tuesday. Besides the dark and wet establishing shots of New York and the feel of isolation and numbness Travis Bickle seems to carry with him, I can see that he tries several times to let aside all his negative premonitions and get along in this vibrant yet strange and distant city. Although the mood, the setup, the rainy windshield that is constantly cleaned by the wipers and the score, sometimes heavy on brass then following more of a snare drum military motif, push the viewer into a dark hole of despair and emptiness, there are still parts of the movie that are fun to watch and which give hope for a potential positive outcome.
Travis’ approach to the girl working for the political campaign seems upbeat, humorous and foreshadows some good times and although I’ve seen this movie before, I thought I was watching a different version. Somehow I felt great and happy for Travis when he gets the girl to go out with him but I guess I should’ve known better for soon he takes her to a nice porn film or something along that line. I can’t really respond to that meaning that I don’t understand why he purposefully decided to bring her to the movies. He seemed more like a little immature kid who wanted to share something he had discovered earlier. Overall he seems helpless and somewhat unable to live social life. As much as they connected, Travis sinks deeper and deeper into a state of isolation and anger.
The blocking within the film steers as well constantly towards an alienated state of mind. Travis sits with his “buddies” in the restaurant although he is placed on the very right of the table, almost not wanting to interact with them. Travis is caught in a down spiral of frustration and isolation and minute after minute it gets worse and worse.
In Iris he sees the only person he can sympathize with. And there is a need for change within Travis although he knows that he will not be the one who will change. So he buys some guns and frees Iris from the wings of her pimp. Ironically Travis fails to finish his plans cause there are no bullets left to take his own life. He survives, which I have completely forgotten ever since I saw that film the last time, and he is celebrated as a hero. The best scene of the movie takes place at the end when he drops Betsy at her apartment and takes off. We get to see a few shots, Travis’ eyes in the rear mirror and then, out of nowhere, Travis’ looks in the rear mirror, turns his head left and right and the credits start. This jerky moment feels to me like the demons and voices in Travis’ head are far from being gone. The story comes full circle and starts from scratch.
Sound makes the vertigo work for me in the night scenes. I know this was done budget-conscious, but it's effective. We're in a taxi, sliding down the streets, and it's almost cozy. The narration, while sounding unhappy, never raises its tone or over-emphasises any painful syllables. And the jazz music is almost calming.
And that's vertigo. Really. Everything's just... chill. But it's unsettling. Vertigo isn't all hell breaking loose, every fucking sense going on overload. It's portrayed here like an overload of calm. Travis Bickle sees all this scum, apathy, filth, and he's cruising to jazz music all the while. It's kind of sickening.
And that's also the night, even in the city. All the noise, which could be amplified by the night air, seems to die, and this whole movie is like the long dream of an insomniac txi driver.
Taxi Driver strikes me with its use of the blurred color reflecting off rainwater against the cityscape. Scorsese shows the blurred nature of insanity and the meshing of reality. The stark splattering of yellows, reds, and greens makes the delineation between sanity and insanity blurred; this look is made more powerful by the fact this image blurring is strictly held to Travis’s windshield. This further solidifies the thought that his world is blurring and clarifying physically as it is blurring and clarifying mentally.
"Taxi Driver" is Scorsese's first film in which a score was composed. All of his previous films contained source music. Clearly, music plays an integral role in all of his films, and "Taxi Driver" is no expection.
It seems almost absurd to single out one aesthetic element of the film as the root cause of our collective sense of vertigo when watching this film. It begins with Schrader's fantastic script, to the acting, the direction, the cinematography, and the score. Rarely is it seen in cinema for a film to be as thoroughly brilliant as this film is on every single level.
That said, I have to point to Hermann's final score as my favorite of these elements. For as surreal and abstract as the music seems, the more you think about it the more it makes sense. It is demented military music for a demented war veteran hero who cannot balance the civilian life he now leads with his past. He's a killer, which is what the marines produce (I believe he does specify it was the marines). Essentially, he tries to fit his new identity as a killer into civilian life in New York, where there happens to be a lot of crime, like most big cities in America. Of course, you can't just go around killing people, so he represses those impulses to just wipe out all the trash and garbage he sees on the streets. But, eventually this backfires and he kills anyway.
It's ironic that he becomes a hero at the end, especially when it is clear that he certainly was not in that position when he came home from Vietnam. This may be the most anti-war, anti-military film I've seen next to Kubrick's war pictures, particularly "Barry Lyndon," "Paths of Glory," and "Full Metal Jacket."
It's interesting that no one talks about "Taxi Driver" in this sense. But I think there is a lot to it, it's all in the music and everywhere else in the film, too.
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