TAXI DRIVER (1976)

Of Martin Scorsese’s widely recognized masterwork Taxi Driver (1976), Village Voice film critic Andrew Sarris writes, “There is much to like in Taxi Driver if one doesn’t mind the disorder in the narrative” (Fuchs 697). However, this seems indicative of a vast oversight on the part of the influential critic who popularized the theory of the auteur in American cinema in the late 1960s (a theory which has insinuated itself into the very fabric of film criticism to this day). While it is true that the film appears to meander through much of its first hour, it is largely due to the fact that the protagonist, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), is a meanderer – a taxi driver by night who, while extremely focused in his observations, nevertheless lacks much in the way of defined ambition (hence “disorder”).