Taxi Driver

Robert De Niro in his legendary role as Vietnam veteran and taxi driver Travis Bickle.

Captured in dreamlike images, the familiar yellow New York taxi glides through rain-soaked streets amid clouds of steam, accompanied by Bernard Herrmann’s film-noir-style score. Blinking neon lights reflect in the cab’s gleaming paintwork and in the eyes of its driver, Travis Bickle, played by a dazzling Robert De Niro. A Vietnam veteran with no sense of belonging, he is a sleepless driver who observes the criminals, prostitutes and drug addicts of the night—a society full of trash and degradation.

Many labelled Taxi Driver as glorifying violence when it came out. Travis’s personal crusade is undoubtedly portrayed with a certain fascination. The film has also been defended as an endorsement of a brutal vigilante philosophy; conversely, Travis has been described as a Jesus figure on the verge of cleansing the temples of the 1970s. More soberly, we can characterise Taxi Driver as 1970s film noir, with equal measures of realism and existentialism.

Screenwriter Paul Schrader deserves much of the credit for making the film spark a wealth of associations without allowing it to be pinned down to a single idea. Taxi Driver also stands out as a showcase for its actors. It was the film that truly launched Robert De Niro’s career, and it featured Jodie Foster’s debut role. Taxi Driver also brought Martin Scorsese his major international breakthrough, winning, among other honours, the Palme d’Or for Best Film at Cannes.

A brilliant nightmare and like all nightmares it doesn’t tell us half of what we want to know.

Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times

Taxi Driver was not just a hit but, like Psycho or Bonnie and Clyde, an event in American popular culture (…) Brilliant and yet repellent, at times even hateful, Taxi Driver inspired understandable ambivalence.

J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

Cinemateket i Oslo, Dronningens gate 16, 0152 Oslo. 2 December 2026 at 20:30.