Notable for its moments of shocking violence and its avant-garde visual approach, Taxi Driver is brimming with memorable scenes beyond Bickle’s famous squaring off in the mirror. In particular, another shorter scene really stands as the film’s most important moment of visual idiosyncrasy; showcasing a distinctly European sensibility in what is ultimately a very American drama, as well as encapsulating the lonely melancholy that runs throughout.
A rejection with a difference
Coming a third of the way through the film, and closing its first act, it centres on a phone call Travis makes to Betsy after he’s upset her with his inappropriate date choice. He makes the call from a payphone in a grimy-looking corridor and pleads for a second chance – but, despite his attempt to make amends, she is unmoved.
The scene could have been shot in a typical, melodramatic way, with the camera staying on Travis as he finally realised that his chance with her was blown – and with that, his one sliver of hope to escape his alienated existence. Scorsese, however, eschews the obvious. Instead, cameraman Michael Chapman begins a slow track away from Travis, eventually resting on an empty corridor with an open doorway at its end, leading out onto the street. The corridor, which is the office entrance of the Ed Sullivan Theatre on Broadway, is run-down and hopeless, with a view onto the bustling darkness of the city at night.
The viewer hears Travis’s reaction to being awkwardly dumped off-camera (though not what Betsy says to him) before he hangs up and returns into shot, walking down the corridor with his back to the camera as he leaves the painful moment behind.
The shot is so contrary to the rules of classical Hollywood films where the drama, rather than the visual language of a scene, naturally took precedence – and it masterfully exemplifies both the film’s maverick creative ethos, as one of the seminal works of the 1970s “New Hollywood” revolution, and its protagonist’s isolation and melancholy. Travis never seems more vulnerable than in this moment, contrasting with his later bravado in the mirror scene. Here, the camera seems unable to bear witness to the character’s heartbreak, even if Travis is undoubtedly responsible for it. By moving off Travis, the shot almost allows him a brief retention of dignity, something that the urban society in which he lives rarely affords him.
