An Italo-Judeo Production: Taxi Driver

Abstract

Taxi Driver is probably Scorsese’s most discussed film. Analyses have varied from close formal and thematic exegesis (Bliss 1985, Kolker 1988, Friedman 1997) to studies of the film as, for example, as ‘incoherent text’ (Wood 1980), the culmination of Hollywood’s ‘certain tendency’ (Ray 1985), a domestic relocation of the experience of Vietnam (Fuchs 1991), a pre-eminent instance of seventies ‘apocalyptic art’ (Sharrett 1993) and a ‘recasting’ of The Searchers (Stern 1995). In adding another reading to the densely documented terrain of Taxi Driver, this chapter will strive to negotiate a path between existing accounts of the film and, hopefully, to open up some fresh ground.