There is one shot in Taxi Driver that earns its reputation as a masterpiece. Well, perhaps there are a few more, but these few frames tucked away in the first half of the film strike me as particularly brilliant. Travis is making a left turn in his cab into the dispatch office. The camera sits facing the street from the sidewalk, so the cab passes us from the right. And as the car passes out of the frame on the left, just beginning to make its turn, the camera spins clockwise to catch the nose of the car parking, now again on the right side of the screen. While the cab is moving around the camera right to left, the camera pivots the other direction to meet it again at a point opposite of where we started. It is not nearly as dizzying as it sounds. It comes off as an effortless gesture, an almost juvenile sweep of the camera.


But in so demolishing the bland scope of 180°, Scorsese manages to tilt us slickly into a perspective far more suited to his character. Taxi Driver didn’t progress like other films of its day, which may be one reason why it has stuck out so conspicuously over the years. It isn’t your typical three acts in which we move neatly through a packaged narrative that deposits us in bit of closure at the end. Indeed, it does end unexpectedly nicely, as Travis Bickle has made his peace with the world and its socially conscious middle-class blondes. But it only gets there after a steady progression of the storyline that doesn’t halt in stages to let us catch up. Instead it is more of a character sketch. And as such, the film begins to emerge as an organic reproduction of Bickle’s ongoing monologue. Rhythmically punctuated by the image of Travis at the helm of his taxicab in a glimmering New York, an oddly appropriate vigilante story then unfolds in spite of itself.


Scorsese just lets him loose until he picks up enough steam to derail with great violence the other end of the screenplay. The image of Bickle standing in front of the mirror practicing his tough guy act has become iconic, but it is a shame that pop culture has frozen our memory of Travis at this point in the film. That image of Travis is premature, he hasn’t yet reached the potential the inevitabilities of his character have in store for him. Rather fans of the film should hang up posters of Travis as he is found at the end by the cops, smirking and miming suicide with a bloody hand. It as well is an effortless, almost juvenile gesture, but this image then leads to the happy ending of the film that belies the terrific violence through which it occurs. We have to skirt the ethical issues justly raised by films like A History of Violence to buy Bickle’s return to society, but Taxi Driver simply wants us to come full circle with Travis without whatever moralizing it may inspire.


This connection is a bit lame, but like the shot described earlier, Scorsese pans us around Travis until we meet him at the other end. He is able to appreciate both viewer and character as round figures capable of feeling their way through the film. Taxi Driver’s classic, timeless status may derive from the way it develops a life of its own in this respect. Halfway through the film, Travis Bickle seems to start writing his own script, and sometimes it is all Scorsese can do just to catch him in a pan of the camera.