Travis Bickle: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (Part 1)
An analysis of Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle
Taxi Driver came out in 1976, and it was a big success for Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader. Over the years, it has become increasingly important and influential in the entire industry, and it affected and still influences many directors' way of seeing cinema. It is now considered one of the best movies of the ’70s, and it’s 3rd in my personal movie ranking (might consider writing an article on my top 10).
That being said, what most attracted me to this film was its protagonist. Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle was absolutely amazing, and he stole the whole movie. The following article is an analysis of the character only, it’s not intended to be a review of the film, but I could also do that in the future.
Vietnam War
Travis Bickle is a 26-year-old who lives in New York. He is a former U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam War and was given an honorable discharge in 1973. During little sections of dialogue between Travis and other people, we come to the conclusion that the Vietnam War f****d him up, as the latter is presented to us as the cause of Travis’s antisocial behavior.
This is what the audience is meant to believe, and I believed it too until I read Quentin Tarantino’s latest book “Cinema Speculation” (btw, if you like 70’s Cinema as much as I do, you must check it out).
‘Even Paul Schrader — in regard to Travis Bickle — slightly invests in this type of character Tom Foolery by suggesting Travis is a Vietnam veteran, and that he did a tour of duty during the war. Horseshit. No fucking way was Travis in Vietnam.’ (…)
‘I don’t have a problem with Travis’ fraudulent claim in the movie. The only proof the movie offers up of Travis’ military service (no Vietnam flashbacks) is his account to Joe Spinell and his jacket. Fine, Travis spends the entire movie demonstrating to the audience that he’s an unreliable narrator, completely delusional, and he constantly presents himself to characters in a fraudulent manner (usually to get something he wants at the moment). He bought the jacket in an Army Navy Store.’
An extract from “Cinema Speculation” by Quentin Tarantino
After reading this, the more I thought of it, the more it’d make sense, and right now, my whole vision of Travis as a war veteran with his mental stability corroded by his trauma is completely gone. What I see now is a mentally unstable New York living unemployed guy who uses the Vietnam War as an excuse to behave the way he does. What still hasn’t changed in my vision of the character is that what made him like this was the city. If you see Travis Bickle as a war veteran, you can agree with me that the city heavily influences his already unstable mind, but as for my new way of interpreting the character, I think that the city’s rot is what turned normal Travis into mentally unstable Travis.
Throughout the whole film, Travis’s been confirming to us that he’s an untrustworthy storyteller. His thoughts don’t match the reality of facts. In Paul Schrader’s mind, Travis might’ve been a real War Veteran, but Tarantino’s two cents on De Niro’s character are widely justified.
Guns & Morality
A (not so) subtle argument that can be found in Taxi Driver is gun violence. In almost all of Paul Schrader’s films, either written or directed by him, violence is a central issue in the picture. Taxi Driver deals with it too. The ’70s were the period in cinematic history when violence was starting to increase in movies as a response to the repression of the latter in the past decades. Because of this, many movies had as the main character a guy willing revenge for something that happened to him or to people he loved, the so-called revenge movies. Taxi Driver met those canons: even if it doesn’t issue revenge directly, it sure does resemble how the American mentality was starting to change towards institutions. Most times, those pictures dealt with gun violence rather than “classic” violence. In that sense, Taxi Driver is the perfect example of the hypocrisy of America‘s perception of guns.
Travis Bickle represents the average American: a man who endorses violence without knowing it, as violence comes in many ways, not only physically. The fascination that Travis has towards guns is the same we all have: they scare us, but we are also curious to know what it’s all about. The whole gun violence thing builds up to the last scene, where it explodes in the classic “Scorsesian” way. A terrific 5 minutes sequence of Travis shooting and killing people until it all comes to an end with that magnifique climax with Travis mimicking shooting himself with his hands covered in blood. In my opinion, what follows up to the latter scene is the most horrific aspect of the entire film. As the camera shows us the positive reception the American media has had towards De Niro’s characters’ actions, we hear a voice in the background: it’s the 12-year-old prostitute Iris’s father who is reading a letter we wrote for Travis. HE IS THANKING HIM.
When I first watched it, I lost it. It completely shocked me. But now, thinking of it, I can understand it. America, in particular, but also people in general, have different senses of what is and what is not justice, and sometimes, especially in those years, it’s rather easy to find extreme violence as an answer to extreme violence, a good solution.
That’s all, folks. In the following days, I will publish the second part of my Travis Bickle analysis, which will focus on the characters of Iris and Betsy. Eventually, I’ll write a part 3, too, with my considerations of Martin Scorsese’s directing approach to De Niro’s character and De Niro’s acting.
