Jodie Foster and Robert De Niro on the red carpet at the 29th Cannes Film Festival for Martin Scorsese’s, Taxi Driver, which won the prestigious Palme d’Or that year (1976)

oldfilmsflicker:

cineathome:

The Mirror Scene: You talkin’ to me?

Top: Marlon Brando as Major Penderton in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).
Bottom: Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976)

“I asked [De Niro], ‘Kinda have that scene [from Reflections…] in mind,’ to see what Bob would do in front of the mirror and what he would say to himself. And so the scene ‘Are you talking to me?’ came out of that.” - Martin Scorsese, Brando (2007)

(via marlonconnection)

oldhollywood:

Bernard Herrmann - Main Title (via Taxi Driver: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

“It wasn’t easy getting Bernard Herrmann to compose the music for Taxi Driver. He was a marvelous, but crotchety old man. I remember the first time I called him to do the picture. He said it was impossible, he was very busy, and then asked what it was called. I told him and he said, ‘Oh, no, that’s not my kind of picture title. No, no, no.’

I said, ‘Well, maybe we can meet and talk about it.’ He said, ‘No, I can’t. What’s it about?’ So I described it and he said, ‘No, no, no. I can’t. Who’s in it?’ So I told him and he said, ‘No, no, no. Well, I guess we can have a quick talk.’

Working with him was so satisfying that when he died, the night he had finished the score, on Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, I said there was no one who could come near him. You get to know what you like if you see enough films, and I thought his music would create the perfect atmosphere for Taxi Driver.”

-Martin Scorsese, Scorsese on Scorsese (1989)

Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

This one of the film’s most painful moments (and brilliantly orchestrated camera moves) we see Bickle at a phone booth trying to call her up for another date.  What Scorsese does here is amazing in its execution and payoff.  Rather that having to watch him on the phone get rejected again, Scorsese pans away to an open hallway as we hear the pitiful Bickle trying to talk to this woman.  In a peculiar way, Scorsese finds it too painful to make us watch Bickle grovel.  Interestingly, when he goes on a killing rampage later, we get an in-your-face perspective of all of the carnage.  Scorsese is telling us that Bickle’s emotional pain is tougher for us to bare than the slaughtering he does later.