The haunting scene that makes Taxi Driver a true classic

Known for its shocking moments of violence and groundbreaking visual approach, Taxi Driver is packed with unforgettable scenes that go beyond Bickle’s famous scene in the mirror. In particular, there’s another, shorter scene that’s really the film’s most significant moment of visual specificity; Displaying a distinctly European sensibility in what is ultimately a very American drama, as well as encapsulating the insular gloom that runs throughout.

Reject with a difference

A third of the way through the film, at the conclusion of the first act, the film focuses on a phone call Travis made to Betsy after he upset her with his inappropriate choice of date. He makes a call from a pay phone in a dirty corridor and asks for a second chance – but although he tries to make amends, she is unmoved.

The scene could have been shot in typically melodramatic fashion, with the camera lingering on Travis as he finally realizes that his chance with her has been dashed – and with that, his only glimmer of hope of escaping his isolated existence. But Scorsese avoids the obvious. Instead, photographer Michael Chapman begins a slow trail away from Travis, eventually coming to rest on an empty driveway with an open doorway at the end, leading out into the street. The corridor, the entrance to the Ed Sullivan Theater office on Broadway, is rickety and forlorn, overlooking the bustling darkness of the city at night.

The viewer hears Travis’s reaction to being awkwardly thrown off-camera (although it’s not what Betsy says to him) before he hangs up and returns to the shot, walking down the hallway with his back to the camera as he leaves the traumatic moment behind him.

The shot goes completely against the rules of classic Hollywood films, where drama, rather than the visual language of a scene, naturally takes precedence – and it brilliantly captures the film’s maverick creative spirit, as one of the seminal works of the ‘New Hollywood’ revolution of the 1970s, and its protagonist’s isolation and grief. Travis never seems more vulnerable than he does in this moment, which belies his later bravado in the mirror scene. Here the camera seems unable to bear witness to the character’s sadness, even if Travis is undoubtedly responsible for it. By turning away from Travis, the shot almost allows him to briefly retain dignity, something the urban society in which he lives rarely affords him.