Travis' implied feelings about blacks, for example, which emerge in two long shots in a taxi driver's hangout, when he exchanges looks with a man who may be a drug dealer.
There are undercurrents in the film that you can sense without quite putting your finger on them. With both Betsy and Iris, he has a friendly conversation in a coffee shop, followed by an aborted "date," followed by attacks on the men he perceived as controlling them he tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Palatine, and then goes gunning for Sport. The Palatine scenes are like dress rehearsals for the ending of the film. And then, after the fearsome rehearsal in the mirror, he becomes a walking arsenal and goes to assassinate Palatine. That goes wrong with the goofy idea of a date at a porno movie. Shortly after that Travis tries to "free" one of Palatine's campaign workers, a blonde he has idealized ( Cybill Shepherd), from the Palatine campaign. He goes through the motions of ingratiating flattery, but we, and Palatine, sense something wrong. The story takes place during a political campaign, and Travis twice finds himself with the candidate, Palatine, in his cab. In "Taxi Driver," this central story is surrounded by many smaller ones, all building to the same theme. The buried message of both films is that an alienated man, unable to establish normal relationships, becomes a loner and wanderer, and assigns himself to rescue an innocent young girl from a life that offends his prejudices. But a crucial earlier scene between Iris and Sport suggests that she was content to be with him, and the reasons why she ran away from home are not explored. A letter and clippings from the Steensmas, Iris' parents, thank him for saving their girl. Travis determines to "rescue" Iris, and does so, in a bloodbath that is unsurpassed even in the films of Scorsese. He encounters a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris ( Jodie Foster), controlled by a pimp named Sport ( Harvey Keitel). In "Taxi Driver," Travis Bickle also is a war veteran, horribly scarred in Vietnam. There is, significantly, no scene showing us how the niece feels about what has happened to her. As the movie ends, the niece is reunited with her surviving biological family, and the last shot shows Wayne silhouetted in a doorway, drawn once again to the wide open spaces. The dynamic here is that Wayne has forgiven his niece, after having participated in the killing of the people who, for 15 years or so, had been her family. Wayne then plans to kill the girl, for the crime of having become a "squaw." But at the end, finally capturing her, he lifts her up (in a famous shot) and says, "Let's go home, Debbie." When he finally finds her, she tells him the Indians are her people now, and runs away.
The thought of Debbie in the arms of an Indian grinds away at him. "The Searchers" has Civil War veteran John Wayne devoting years of his life to the search for his young niece Debbie ( Natalie Wood), who has been kidnapped by Commanches. They are like the proverbial Boy Scout who helps the little old lady across the street whether or not she wants to go. In both films, the heroes grow obsessed with "rescuing" women who may not, in fact, want to be rescued. It is a widely known item of cinematic lore that Paul Schrader's screenplay for "Taxi Driver" was inspired by " The Searchers," John Ford's 1956 film. Every time I see it, it works I am drawn into Travis' underworld of alienation, loneliness, haplessness and anger. Martin Scorsese's 1976 film (re-released in theaters and on video in 1996 in a restored color print, with a stereophonic version of the Bernard Herrmann score) is a film that does not grow dated, or over-familiar. Most of us are better at dealing with it.
This utter aloneness is at the center of "Taxi Driver," one of the best and most powerful of all films, and perhaps it is why so many people connect with it even though Travis Bickle would seem to be the most alienating of movie heroes.
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