Paul Schrader's Taxi Driver Film Noir

Paul Schrader; an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and film critic; that attended Calvin College, Columbia University and UCLA, where he graduated from the film program. Schrader’s studies played a major role in his life as a filmmaker, for it allowed him to create classic dark films like “Taxi Driver” and “American Gigolo”. Schrader’s article on film noir (black or dark film) discussed how these films brought cynicism, darkness, and pessimism into the cinema in America and over in to Europe (pg. 213). He does this by breaking the article into four major parts: influences, stylistics, themes and phases. The two points Schrader discusses in complexity are the influences and phases. In the article Schrader illustrates how film noir reflect the dark side, like crime and corruption, that occurs within the world (pg. 214). He also demonstrates how the influence in Hollywood create film noir during the 1940’s. Influences like war and postwar disillusionment, postwar realism,

Schrader illustrates how the realistic movement went perfect with the postwar atmosphere in America because it gave the audience the harsh reality of how they were truly living during that era (pg. 216). The German expatriates gave American films a gritty image that increased the realism within the film. Moreover, the hard-boil tradition helped create the “tough,” which is a cynical way of acting and thinking. This influence was created by author’s like Ernest Hemingway and Horace McCoy, who started in journalism before making it big in the cinema world, created heroes that were appeared tough in the eyes of the audience, but were weak and soft (pg.218). For the hard-boil tradition helped create the criminal seeking film noirs like Mildred Pierce, which was both of crime fiction and as well a