Taxi Driver

Origin: U.S (Bill/Phillips, Columbia, Italo/Judeo) 1976
Length: 113 minutes
Format: Metrocolor
Director: Martin Scorsese
Producer: Julia Phillips, Michael Phillips
Screenplay: Paul Schrader
Photography: Michael Chapman
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Cast: Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepard, Peter Boyle, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Leonard Harris, Albert Brooks, Diahnne Abbott, Frank Adu, Victor Argo, Gino Ardito, Garth Avery, Harry Cohn, Copper Cunningham, Brenda Dickson-Weinberg
Oscar Nominations: Michael Phillips, Julia Phillips(best picture), Robert De Niro(actor), Jodie Foster(actress in support role), Bernard Herrmann(music)
Cannes Film Festival: Martin Scorsese(Golden Palm)
Links: Taxi Driver Wiki, Taxi Driver Trailer

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"Some day a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the street." So mutters tormented taxi driver malcontent Travis Bickle, played with maximum intensity by Robert De Niro in the first of his lauded lead turns for Martin Scorsese. Bickle's job shuttling back and forth across New York City - "anytime, anywhere", he boasts - provides him an insomniac's view of the city's underbelly, all those things on dark backstreets that most people never witness. But he's become so inured to the world around him that he feels numb, invisible, and ultimately impotent.
Yet Bickle is not so much outraged at the signs of social and physical decay around him as he is frustrated that he no longer knows anything else. He's also conflicted, attracted to the very things he purports to despise. Sick of himself and what he sees, he embarks on a final, desperate quest to reintegrate himself into society. "I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention," he says, "I believe that one should become a person like other people." But in Paul Schrader's bleak, hell-on-earth script, there's no way out. Bickle is already too far gone.