![]() The closing credits appear on these blurred images of night colors while the oppressing notes of Bernard Herrmann’s score rumbles on. As he adjusts the mirror, Travis disappears and we see only the street lights. The camera frames only the windshield and the mirror showing Travis’ eyes. As he adjusts the rearview mirror a strident sound is heard. Taxi Driver concludes with Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) in his cab driving off into the New York night. 2 The closing credits burn into the resulting prism of incandescent colors while the passionate rhythm of Peter Gabriel’s music drums on the soundtrack. The opening credits start over this show of light designed by the late Saul Bass, who created some of the most amazing title sequences, including Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Psycho as well as Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Cape Fear and The Age of Innocence.Īt the end of The Last Temptation of Christ, at the exact moment when a shouting Jesus (Willem Dafoe) dies on the cross shouting It is accomplished!, we see on the screen the equivalent of a film run-out, as if the film had been exposed to light. Bach’s St Matthew Passion bursts on the soundtrack, Ace’s burnt corpse whirls on the screen in slow motion amid an abstract mosaic of flames, colors and lights. ![]() The pre-credit scene shows Las Vegas’ Tangiers director Sam Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) getting into his car, turning the key and being blown through the roof by a powerful explosion. The most recent opus of italianamerican director Martin Scorsese, Casino opens as Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ end : with a kaleidoscopic display of colors equally reminiscent of heaven and hell. I didn’t know that the characters we created in our films were existential heroes I never studied philosophy. But what if there existed a new approach to the film, especially a new way to interpret the enigmatic ending that still puzzles many viewers? What if this new reading could radically change our perception of other Scorsese films? What if a continuous linkage could be thus created from Taxi Driver through The King of Comedy, After Hours, Goodfellas, all the way to the more recent Casino ? And what if the main clue bringing together all these films could be found in The Last Temptation of Christ ? This is the subject and goal of this analysis of the second ending of Taxi Driver. There is even a film whose title Are You Talkin’ to Me? is a line taken from Bickle’s famous monologue.Īfter twenty years, one would think that everything has been said about Taxi Driver. Countless hommages and tributes have been made to Taxi Driver in such recent films as Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. The years have elevated it to the status of an American classic. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, the film celebrated its twentieth anniversary last year and remains as powerful and disturbing as ever, particularly in regard to the ambiguous ending in which psychopath taxi driver Travis Bickle survives his killing rampage. ![]() Taxi Driver became the emblem of this negative criticism. He was mainly criticized for his use of extreme violence, his portrayal of disturbingly unsympathetic and unredeemable characters and his morbid fascination with failure as a dramatic drive. In the seventies, his films had a tendency to upset as much as to be acclaimed. In a survey done in the early nineties, Raging Bull was elected as the best American film of the eighties. Today, Martin Scorsese is considered by the majority of film critics as the greatest living American director. By Andre Caron Volume 1, Issue 6 / September 1997 43 minutes (10683 words)
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