8 February 2022
(This was written at some point circa 2017 with a few minor edits).
Intro:
Martin Scorsese is a renowned director of such fame that when his name is mentioned, one automatically knows who he is. He is critically acclaimed among the likes of Steven Spielberg and other legendary directors (also called the ‘movie brats’ for having attended a formal film school), among these directors he has been in the movie business for over fifty years. He has been nominated for countless awards over the years including nominations for eight academy awards for Best Director. From hearing his name countless times, and having people tell me I should watch one of his most well-known movies, Taxi Driver. I made my decision to watch Scorsese films from the 1970s to the early 1980s that featured actor Robert De Niro. I chose to watch and analyze Taxi Driver (1976), Mean Streets (1973), and Raging Bull (1980).
Sound:
Director Martin Scorsese has a very noticeable technique, one that he uses throughout many of his movies. If you watched one of his films in the past and decided to watch another one of them you would immediately be able to recognize his distinct style of cinema. The first thing I picked up on throughout watching these movies was sound. Although Scorsese is credited for his use of various kinds of music, he is also recognized for his lack of sound and what the power of moments of silence can convey. In Taxi Driver, throughout the entirety of the movie, there is this saxophone music playing. It sounds jazzy-like and is almost calming which is in its own way ironic since the movie is very dark and is about a psychotic man who is disgusted with the “filth” on the streets of New York. The music only starts to get slightly lower and darker at the end, still with the jazzy calming saxophone music. A particular moment that stood out, however, was when our protagonist Travis (Robert De Niro) is driving a “sick” passenger who describes how he is going to kill his wife with a 44 magnum pistol for cheating on him. This entire sequence is silent with minimal dialogue from Travis as well, and the silence conveys the rage that Travis is feeling towards this mans’ maltreatment of his wife. Depending on how one would watch this scene it could be argued that the music was a metaphor for what Travis is thinking. In comparison, Mean Street’s use of sound is completely the opposite. Instead of having an instrumental play throughout the entirety of the movie, Mean Streets utilized popular songs and artists such as The Rolling Stones, The Marvelettes, and Betty Everett. It was iconic the way Scorsese used the song Please Mr. Postman is one of the famously recognized scenes in the movie when the bartender calls one of the guys a “mook” and a fight breaks out with this song playing in the background. The idea of sound used in Raging Bull is similar to that used in Taxi Driver. Scorsese uses many moments of silence, a moment, in particular, is after Jake La Motta’s second loss to Sugar Ray Robinson. Scorsese also uses sound subjectively to convey to the audience the emotions going on inside the character’s head.
Color:
Along with the sound, Scorsese utilizes color schemes in different ways. In Raging Bull he uses black and white to give it a neo-noir feel. The film was made in 1980 but it’s set in the 1940s-60s, although it does have a 70s movie feel with a strong amount of violence. In Taxi Driver the coloring is saturated with very low-key lighting, it appears very unnatural to convey what Travis sees when he’s driving in his cab, which is filth and grime. This is mainly used in the scenes when he is driving in the streets, the lighting gets noticeably brighter when the characters are talking inside a building. Green and red are used a lot in “Taxi Driver” and if one wants to do a very deep analysis it could be interpreted as a “red means stop” and “green means go” in terms of Travis being a taxi driver. In context, this film was made in 1976 when New York actually was in the midst of a “garbage strike” and was a very dirty and terrifying place to be. In Mean Streets, the color is the same as in Taxi Driver. Both films are very 70s-esque and have the same low saturation. The colors are almost dark and shadowy in a sense but also bright. Mean Streets has a much grimier feel, with much darker colors even with reds and greens because it is a gangster/crime film. This color scheme is shown in the scenes when the guys are hanging out in various bars or on the streets at night, which has the same landscape and feel like Taxi Driver.
Themes/Occurring Elements:
Throughout all three movies, there are protagonists or main characters with a mental illness, sometimes it is made clear immediately, other times it takes much of the film to develop but it is implied. In Taxi Driver, it is clear from the very beginning that our protagonist Travis has a very strong disdain for the streets of New York and wishes for a “real rain to come to wash all (the) scum off the streets.” Later on, in the movie, he attempts to kill Senator Palatine who is running for President. Betsy, a woman who rejected him, was working at the Senator’s campaign office and perhaps is the reason for Travis’ ultimate dismay. In the beginning, Travis was obsessed with Betsy, this is shown in the scene when he went so far to sit and wait in his cab in front of the campaign office before he even spoke to her. Similarly, in Raging Bull our protagonist Jake LaMotta has an obsession with a woman named Vickie who he later married. This obsession is shown when he accuses her of cheating on him with different men in multiple scenes throughout the movie. However, according to Roger Ebert “there is no direct evidence that she (Vickie) cheated on him (Jake)” yet this is what leads to his demise. In Mean Streets Robert De Niro’s character, Johnny Boy starts to go crazy towards the middle to end of the movie. Johnny Boy has a hard time paying off his debts to the other members of the gang and is disliked by a few. In one scene towards the end he is standing on a roof and begins shooting randomly with a gun into the air, he only stops after the other protagonist Charlie (Harvey Keitel) comes to get him.
Camera Shots:
I noticed that Martin Scorsese is obsessed with dolly zoom close-ups of various people and things and tracking shots. He utilizes this close-up in Taxi Driver multiple times, firstly whenever Travis is driving there is a close-up on the rearview mirror or on the taxi cab sign on the top of the car. He also uses tracking shots whenever Travis is driving and there are a lot of cuts in these shots. In Mean Streets, this close-up is used on signs and occasionally the characters. When the guys are in a bar there is a shot of Johnny Boy standing in front of a sign that says “positively no gambling,” the camera zooms in on the poster in particular. This technique is used the most in Raging Bull, it is used to make the background appear as though it is changing in size. It is used at the end of the movie in LaMotta and Robinson’s brutal final fight, Robinson appears to the audience to be the same size while the background moves further and further away to put into perspective how badly beaten LaMotta was.
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