Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece turned the streets of New York into a neon-soaked fever dream. Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle — insomniac, alienated, and increasingly unhinged — prowled a city that in the mid-1970s was at its most dangerous and cinematically fertile.

The driving sequences were shot across Manhattan: East 13th Street, West 42nd Street, Columbus Avenue, 8th Avenue through Hell’s Kitchen, and 5th Avenue near 19th Street. Cinematographer Michael Chapman shot mostly at night with available light, giving the film its distinctive lurid glow.

„You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.”

Times Square in 1976 was the epicentre of the city’s crisis — peep shows, open drug dealing, and decay on every corner. Scorsese filmed extensively around West 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, the heart of what locals called „the Deuce.”

Screenwriter Paul Schrader drew on his own experience of isolation while living out of his car in Los Angeles. The script was written in a fortnight. De Niro prepared by actually driving a taxi in New York for a month.

The contrast between these locations then and now is the starkest of any film on this site. Modern Times Square bears almost no physical resemblance to Bickle’s city.