Looking Forward into the Rear View Mirror: Taxi Driver Turns 35 by Alan Miller

Taxi-driver-fascination

For a man of the 1970s, Travis Bickle spends a lot of time looking at and through screens. His world is nearly always framed, either by a movie screen, an old TV, a windshield, a shop window or a rear view mirror. As Travis would know, at the movies everything is bigger than on TV. Taxi Driver is a different film on the big screen, especially in the gleaming print released to commemorate its 35th birthday (Travis himself would be 61 in 2011, does he live in Westchester now?), but not all elements of the film grow at the same rate. As the city around Travis becomes more detailed, more luminous and seductive, the film becomes more than the tale of “God’s lonely man,” more than a prelude to violence. Taxi Driver gets pulled out of the gutter Travis is so desperate to clean.

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