Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film, Taxi Driver, is said to be the best representation of of neo-modernist noir. The main character Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a young Vietnam War veteran with extreme paranoia and psychotic schizophrenia like tendencies. Throughout the film, Travis and the audience are left wondering what is going on and are constantly trying to figure out the motives and reasoning behind what is taking place. The use of voice over narration in the film via Travis’ diary entries provide the audience a glimpse inside of Travis’ head and help etch Taxi Driver into the neo-modernist noir genre.
Travis’ voice overs are never spoken in retrospect, but rather in present time and they chronicle his thoughts at the exact moment, which gives the audience a glimpse into his schizophrenic mind. In the beginning of the film, Travis’ narrations are quite frequent and tie together his sanity with his present life such as getting his job at the taxi company and asking Betsy on a date. However, once Betsy walks away from him on his date, we do not get another voice over from Travis until after he buys his guns. This lapse in voice overs represents Travis losing touch with himself and letting his schizophrenia take over his judgement. The more psychotic Travis gets, the less voice over we get and the more violent he becomes. Each lapse in voice over marks a violent portion of the film such as buying the guns:
killing the man at the convenience store:
attempting to kill Charles Palantine:
and murdering three people trying to save Iris:
Also, the last voice over narration is from Iris’ parents thanking Travis for saving their daughter leading me to believe that although Travis is viewed as a hero and having his life put together, he may in fact still be very schizophrenic and moments away from having another violent outburst.
The use of voice over narration gives Travis these neo-modernist noir qualities of a man who is extremely alienated and paranoid driven by the political nature of the time effected by war and PTSD. The whole film balances on the fence between Travis’ imagination and reality while blurring the relationship between the two thanks to the use of Travis’ voice over narration. Taxi Driver is able to bring the genre of film noir to the modern audience and portrays the perfect story of how an alienated man’s rage can lead to the dark twisted story of a murderer who ends up being a local hero.
Jasper Golfer 