Fr : version française / En: english version
Martin Scorcese
Date : 1976
Length : 1h 53'
With : Robert de Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel
Copyright : Gie Sphe-Tf1 vidéo
View this work in the Urban transportation exhibition
Taxi Driver is a 1976 cult film written by Paul Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese. A Vietnam War veteran (Robert de Niro) works at night as a New York taxi driver. Somewhat unbalanced, he fancies himself as a social avenger on a mission to "clean up this city". His encounter with a child prostitute (Jodie Foster) prompts him to get her away from the underworld and her pimp (Harvey Keitel) who he ends up killing, so earning his redemption. The film was a huge box office success and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Born into a Sicilian immigrant family in New York City in 1942, the film director Martin Scorsese grew up in Little Italy. He was expelled from the seminary where he had begun theological studies and eventually studied film at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He made several short films of note and became an assistant director and co-editor of the documentary film Woodstock. With the support of John Cassavetes, he worked on a number of personal projects and made Mean Streets. His decisive meeting with Robert de Niro, who was to become a kind of onscreen alter ego, led to their making nine films together, many of them hugely successful, including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. Scorsese has won many awards as a director (Golden Globe, Oscar, Palme d'Or, Lion d'Or, etc.). He has a passion for music: apart from Woodstock, he made film documentaries The Last Waltz, about the last concert of The Band, and Shine a Light, about the Rolling Stones' Beacon Theater concert. His films address highly-charged, urban themes in a style characterized by rapid editing and a soundtrack often overloaded with atmospheric sounds, voice-overs, dialog and omnipresent music.