Analyzing the opening scene from ''Taxi Driver''

1. Opening Scene in Thriller
Film
TAXI DRIVER (1976)

2. About Film
 Film ‘’Taxi Driver’’ has main character called Travis Bickle, Vietnam War veteran
who suffers from insomnia because of post-traumatic syndroms. That’s why he
works as a taxi driver when it’s night.

3. Opening Scene
 The film starts with a very uncomfortable music. Then it becomes calmer
and a taxi appears from the fog. Then music drastically changes into
more jazzy and relaxed and we have extreme close up shot of main
character’s eyes who is probably driving a taxi. Then whe have a point of
view shot from the front of taxi and we see too colourful and blurred
New York. After that the music returns to more frightening as it was in
the beginning and it turns into jazzy relaxed again. Then a fog enters and
next scene starts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbvWoruvf5c&ab_cha
nnel=CaptSid

4. Narrative Theory
 The first example that comes when talking about narrative theories is Levi-Strauss
theory of binary opposites. They are the battle between music melodies,
frightening vs relaxed. The relaxed music may probably refer to the greatness of
New York while the uncomfortable music can refer to crime that surrounds New
York.

5. Shots
 The ECU of main character refers to his investigating the city and the next point of
view shot approves it.

6. Bernard Hermann
 A few to say about the composer Bernard Hermann, he is the master of his job
because he can do the peaceful score in ’’Citizen Kane’’ (1941) and the scary one
from ‘’Psycho’’ (1960) and he masterfully combined these two types of music in
‘’Taxi Driver’’ in order to make a watcher a bit confused in the beginning.

7. Lightning
 The opening uses the low key lightning so it adds the seriousness so we already
know that the film is not going to be happy