Taxi Driver
Films that shaped it
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It is a widely known item of cinematic lore that Paul Schrader's screenplay for "Taxi Driver" was inspired by "The Searchers," John Ford's 1956 film.
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Schrader credits Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket and Au hasard Balthazar as touchstones for his early screenplays and direction... for his depiction of alienated characters and his formal rigor.
Films it shaped
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Nicolas Winding Refn crafted Drive as an intoxicating, neon-drenched fairy tale, but its stoic soul belongs entirely to the French cinematic tradition of the ultra-cool, ascetic criminal. Refn and star Ryan Gosling obsessively studied Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï, borrowing Alain Delon's deadpan silence and the mythological code of an underworld phantom who speaks only when absolutely necessary. The film's deliberate, hypnotic pacing and fascination with solitary men navigating fatalistic systems is further reinforced by Melville's Le Cercle Rouge. By bathing the clinical detachment of the French New Wave era in a synth-pop, Los Angeles glow, Refn orchestrated a mesmerizing explosion of romantic brutality.
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When I saw Taxi Driver when I was 16, I was blown away by it. I had never seen a movie with such an impressive portrayal of an alienated character, or of an urban environment at night.
