The Western Revisited in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver
One need only peruse his impressive filmography to realize that Martin Scorsese's corpus spans several decades and extends across as many genres. As a veteran filmmaker (and self professed cinephile) Scorsese must understand that the Western is the oldest Hollywood genre which, like all genres, is defined according to specific motifs, iconography, conventions and themes (Mast, 468). In fact, by deliberately invoking the codes and conventions of the Western to underpin Taxi Driver (1976), he demonstrates his virtuosic mastery of the genre. To be sure, Scorsese's film not only resuscitates this particular kind of narrative, but it goes so far as to mimic one of the most celebrated Westerns of all time, John Ford's The Searchers (1956).
As Robert Warshow contends, "the popular genre film makes connections both with its filmic past and within the temperaments of its contemporary viewers" (Mast, 430). Though they were made some twenty years apart, each film is the product of similar sociohistorical circumstances. The postWar ethos of American cynicism following Korea and World War II underlies The Searchers; while Taxi Driver manifests the seething resentment in the wake of Vietnam. It is not surprising, then, that each film features as its central protagonist a returning war veteran who seeks respite from an overwhelming sense of anomie and patent loneliness. This is not to suggest that Taxi Driver is merely a modern day remake of The Searchers, although the narrative and basic thematic structure of Scorsese's film does appear to be virtually identical to Ford's classic. It is just that the generic similarities that exist between the two films are much more interesting t...
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... Travis is even allowed expression is Scorsese's attempt to absolve the guilty conscience of the returning war veteran, even though he is unable to alleviate his feeling of loneliness.
The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
(Thomas Wolfe, God's Lonely Man )
I'm God's lonely man.
(Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver)
Works Cited:
Allen, Robert C., ed. Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Boyd, Peter. "Prisoners of the Night." Film Heritage. winter 1976: 2430.
Kolker, Robert Phillip. A Cinema of Loneliness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Mast, Gerald, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy, eds. Film Theory and Criticism. Oxford University Press: New York, 1992.
In the article “The Thematic Paradigm” exerted from his book, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, Robert Ray provides a description of the two types of heroes depicted in American film: the outlaw hero and the official hero. Although the outlaw hero is more risky and lonely, he cherishes liberty and sovereignty. The official hero on the other hand, generally poses the role of an average ordinary person, claiming an image of a “civilized person.” While the outlaw hero creates an image of a rough-cut person likely to commit a crime, the official hero has a legend perception. In this essay, I will reflect on Ray’s work, along with demonstrating where I observe ideologies and themes.
While there are many different ways to classify a Neo-noir film, Roman Polanski’s, Chinatown captures many. The 1974 movie consists of many of these elements, including both thematic and stylistic devices. One of the main themes of neo-noir film that is constant throughout the film is the deceptive plot that questions the viewers’ ideas and perceptions of what is actually happening in the film. Every scene of Chinatown leads to a twist or another turn that challenges the practicability of the film’s reality. All of the never-ending surprises and revelations lead up to the significant themes the movie is trying to convey in the conclusion of the film.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
NAREMORE, J. (1998). More than night film noir in its contexts. Berkeley, University of California Press. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=42280.
Any generic film hero is a model of their community and culture. They help to clearly define and outline the community’s values and cultural conflicts by embodying prime characteristics in their persona. The western hero, like Ethan in The Searchers, is always a figure for civilization amongst the savagery of the wild west. By portraying the roles of a civilization, the hero ...
The director Antoine Fuqua vision for this film was to bring that intense love-hate relationship onto the big screen and showcase it for the world to see. To ensure a convincing film setting, Fuqua shot on location in some of the most hardcore neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Fuqua also wanted to show the daily struggles of officers tasked to work in the rougher neighborhoods of cities and how easy it can be to get caught up in a street life filled with killers and drug dealers. Overall the film displayed the city of Los Angeles in a different perspective. One which m...
Think about your favorite movie. When watching that movie, was there anything about the style of the movie that makes it your favorite? Have you ever thought about why that movie is just so darn good? The answer is because of the the Auteur. An Auteur is the artists behind the movie. They have and individual style and control over all elements of production, which make their movies exclusively unique. If you could put a finger on who the director of a movie is without even seeing the whole film, then the person that made the movie is most likely an auteur director. They have a unique stamp on each of their movies. This essay will be covering Martin Scorsese, you will soon find out that he is one of the best auteur directors in the film industry. This paper will include, but is not limited to two of his movies, Good Fellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street. We will also cover the details on what makes Martin Scorsese's movies unique, such as the common themes, recurring motifs, and filming practices found in their work. Then on
... middle of paper ... ... Travis, in contrast, does act in order to pursue his ideal, but in such a contradictory and vile fashion that it almost denounces the title of saviour altogether. Ironically, he survives the order, despite attempting to commit suicide, and is lauded as the “taxi driver hero”. He keeps the newspaper clippings praising his heroic endeavor on his wall, perhaps insinuating that he has started to believe that what he has done was heroic, and ultimately justifying what he has done as for the best interest of humankind, and in accordance to the normal interests of “reason, honour, [and] peace” ().
Connelly, Marie. "The films of Martin Scorsese: A critical study." Diss. Case Western Reserve University, 1991. Web. 07 Apr 2014.
Plagiarism is a severe problem because it has since become an epidemic and is being practiced at an alarmingly increasing rate. It has become widely accepted among students at many colleges and universities across the United States. It has gotten to the point that many students don’t even consider it cheating. This fact alone makes it even more serious and harder to control. It is now common practice to obtain someone else’s writing and turn it in as an original work. It is not difficult to purchase a pre-written paper or hire another individual to write a paper. Students are willing to pay whatever the cost so that they don’t have to do the work themselves. In fact, paper-selling services such as this have become quite a lucrative business. With the age of technology quickly advancing it has become all the more easily to plagiarize.
Day by day, people become having more greed. We notice that they try to cheat or steal anything to achieve their goals. Nowadays, big companies are specialized only to imitate products, without permissions by the manufacturing companies, such as car spare parts, clothes and shoes. Likewise so many writers commit plagiarism because they merely think about their own good, while they do not think about the consequences. The way of paying the price of this kind of crime depends on the reaction of the original writers or the organizations investigating their laws to protect copyright.
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.
Early on in life, Franz Marc (1880-1916), a devoted artist, discovered that his most esteemed subjects were animals, and he strove to great lengths to hone his skills for accurately rendering them on canvas. Then, in the early 20th century, an overly-materialist Germany was overcome with a back-to-nature movement that fascinated Marc and ultimately inspired many of his later pieces. Although his initial aim was to replicate the physical likenesses of animals as accurately as possible, Marc quickly became disinterested in his anatomically-correct depictions, and instead began to emphasize his perceived essence of each animal; he felt
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
Plagiarism is the copying of another individual’s writings and ideas. Plagiarism is an idea that has been constructed by society. It revolves around society’s ideas of intellectual and private property. It is considered to be a form of cheating. Often times in elementary schools and high schools, plagiarism is discussed as bad but is not actually prevented. Teachers often do not detect plagiarism and even when they do, sometimes it is ignored. The student is then rewarded with a good grade, ingraining within the student that it is acceptable to plagiarize. Plagiarism affects the ways an individual develops as a person and as a writer.