Taxi Driver (1976 Martin Scorsese)

Scorsese was so lucky to get Herrmann's last great score. According to Time Out  his "remarkable score was completed hours before his death in December 1975".

The naturalistic sound effects are great - you often feel you are in the café etc.

Powell's red! Vertigo's green and red! French!

Probably Scorsese's best film - he needs to go back to this.

19 September 2010

Again. It seemed very French this time.  A work of genius. He should have won the Oscar for this (not even nominated, naturally.)

Everyone's in it (Harvey Keitel, Albert Brooks, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, Jodie Foster...)   

19 June 2010

(While the Q sang to herself in the bar.)

It made me think of killers like Derek Bird (Cumbria shootist) - he even tries to shoot himself in the end.

It also made be think of influence on Tarantino, especially where Scorsese is in the back of the taxi.

The last shots of Shepherd in the rear view mirror in a sea of light are absolutely beautiful (Michael Chapman):

 Scorsese's list of influences is remarkable: Godard, Fassbinder's Merchant of Four Seasons (for the blocking: arrangement of actors in the frame), Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962), Louis Malle's  Le Feu Follet (The Fire Within) (1963; to look like this but in colour), The Wrong Man (camera moves, guilt and paranoia) and Jack Hazan's A Bigger Splash (1973) with David Hockney for its square on framing. And film noir, which he expressly states runs from Double Indemnity to Kiss Me Deadly.

What's surprising is how little Jodie Foster is in it.

In Tarantino's Top 10. I wanted to watch it again the next night.

Scorsese driven by de Niro, shot by Steve Schapiro.