The New Hollywood Cinema

Martin Scorsese 's films Taxi Driver , Mean Streets , and New York New York will be examined in this essay and their relevant thematic links through the devices of plot , character , lighting , dialogue , and film ambiance . Taxi Driver examines the life of Travis Bickle . The film develops both as a narrative and through the camera angles . The film begins with an urban jungle scene in which war is more than likely thus giving foreshadowing to the events that will unfold during the course of the film . There are open sewers throughout the entire film and

there are manhole covers with vapors coming out of them so thick the at home audience can smell the stink , the grim the film on which the movie is based . Scorsese gives the audience an allegory in the film . Scorsese 's attention to music and the character 's interchange is especially noticeable throughout the movie . The slow jazz sequences in the cab pitted against the writhing music in violent scenes makes each scene correlated with one another . This is one of the links by which the director allows the audience to decipher as a chronological movement between pieces of Travis ' narrative (Woods 2005

Travis ' narrative was also an interesting factor in the movie . The progressive of his quiet and stoicism is especially daunting when as the movie progresses more pieces of Travis ' character are revealed . It is his development of character as portrayed by Robert DeNiro upon which the film hinges . He becomes a character through whom society is a cold creature full of pimps , whores , etc . The filth of the street crowds not only the taxi but the viewer 's mind as well so that the image of the city as seen by Travis becomes the viewpoint of the audience as well This viewpoint is the driving force of the film through the filth and the undercurrent motif of the need for rain , the viewer is given permission by the director and through the character Travis to want a radical change in for a baptism albeit in the movie this baptism comes through blood (IMD 2007

It is interesting to note Scorsese 's approach to the cab as a character in the course of the film he personifies the cab early on in the film by allowing the camera to focus on the different parts of th body of the cab just as a camera will sometimes do with the introduction of a new character in the story . The cab 's hood , mirrors , lights each are given precedence in the opening credits of the film as if the audience is supposed to take this as a signal by which is meant for the cab to be used as a vehicle throughout the course of the story . It is through the cab that the main character is transported to not only physical places but emotional places (as with Betsey in the story . These places issue forth a change in the protagonist (Conrad 2007

The change...