Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver

Release Date

1976

Director

  • Martin Scorsese

Cast

  • Robert De Niro
  • Jodie Foster
  • Harvey Keitel
  • Cybill Shepherd

Suffering from insomnia, disturbed loner Travis Bickle takes a job as a New York cabbie, haunting the streets and growing increasingly detached from reality as he dreams of cleaning up the filthy city, first plotting to assassinate a presidential candidate, then to rescue a 12-year-old prostitute.

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his nights working as a cabbie, his days watching porn movies at seedy cinemas, and his life thinking about how the world, and New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner who has strong opinions about what is right and wrong with mankind.

For Travis, the one bright spot in New York is Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), an employee on the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Charles Palatine. Travis becomes obsessed with her, but believes he has to do whatever he needs to make the world a better place, including assassinating Palatine and saving Iris (Jodie Foster), a twelve-year-old runaway and prostitute who he believes wants out of the profession, from her pimp and lover "Sport" (Harvey Keitel).




Image courtesy of PHOTOFEST

Past Programs

2018

Off beat: Circadian rhythms and our daily psychology

Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA