Following “Mean Streets” (1973), this is another collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, both still at the beginning of their careers and both of whom went on to have stellar achievements for half a century. In this case, they had a strong script, courtesy of Paul Schrader who presents the descent into psychological hell of former marine and Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle (De Niro in intense and brilliant form), an insomniac who works nights as a New York City cab driver, despises most of what he sees, and eventually takes it upon himself to become a lone avenger, rescuing an underage prostitute (12 year old Jodie Foster).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This violent film noir has director Scorsese in a cameo slot and the support roles include Cybill Shepherd and Harvey Keitel (also in “Mean Streets”). A particularly memorable scene has a beefed-up and well-armed Travis conversing with himself in the mirror: “You talking to me?”<\/em> he asks four times. He warns us: “Here is a man who would not take it anymore.”<\/em> From the very beginning, the atmospheric saxophone score by Bernard Hermann creates a dark and edgy ambiance. The music was finished mere hours before his death and the film is dedicated to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following “Mean Streets” (1973), this is another collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, both still at the beginning of their careers and both of whom went on to have stellar achievements for half a century. In this case, they had a strong script, courtesy of Paul Schrader who presents the descent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30238"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30242,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30238\/revisions\/30242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}