Taxi Driver

Here is a movie I’m surprised I hadn’t seen yet. I mean, who doesn’t know the phrase “You talkin’ to me?” But I was looking forward to finally seeing Martin Scorsese’s Taxi driver and it didn’t disappoint.

I think one of the main characters in the film is the city itself. During much of the film, we are shown the perspective of Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, and how he views the city. The people on the street, ladies of the night, pimps, and hoodlums–it makes him feel dirty and all he wants is someone to come and wash it clean. I have felt the same thing many times myself. Sometimes I see the evil in people all over the world and wish that something would come and just clean all the evil and cruelty away.

Travis starts off as a relatively normal person, but eventually the world he lives in drives him to extremes. When he starts buying guns and plotting to kill Senator Charles Palantine, played by Leonard Harris, you’re not 100% sure exactly why because the only interaction between him and the senator seemed to be good and the senator was nothing but attentive to what he had to say. It could be that Travis wanted to save Betsy, played by Cybill Shepherd. Or it could be he starts to see the senator as what’s dirty in the city, or maybe his failure to clean up the city.

I really felt bad though when Travis takes Betsy to the dirty movie on their date. I was surprised when she agreed to meet him for coffee and was happy that she gave him a chance. So for the whole thing to be blown due to a bit of ignorance was disappointing. But I guess it was necessary, as it seemed to be the starting point to his unraveling.

The Big Shave

This was such a surprising short film. I wasn’t sure what the point to Martin Scorsese’s The Big Shave was at first. OK, a guy shaving. He looks normal enough. What’s the…..oh! Oh my lord! I usually have a strong tolerance for gore in movies, but even this made me squirm in my seat a little.

After seeing it, I understood why Scorsese used the alternate title Viet 67. Much like Vietnam, it started off clean and simple and thought you knew what was going on. But then it got bloody and out of hand, it wasn’t so simple anymore. It was a mess and the reasons that seemed so clear before were now blurred.

Also I thought it was a good point to talk about the juxtaposition between what was happening on screen and the music that went along with it. Usually the music to go along with something so brutal would be much more dramatic, but the music in the film was old timey and happy. It just added to the confusion of what was happening on screen.

Jaws

This is the first movie I’ve already seen before. In fact, I’ve seen it several times. Now that I think about it, probably a hundred times with how often it has been run on television. But it’s still very watchable. Why is that?

I think the trio of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw was some top-notch acting. I found it interesting in the readings from Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, that Richard Dreyfuss had turned down the role of Matt Hooper three times, but then after seeing himself in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and thinking how terrible his performance was, that he called and begged Speilberg him for the job. The dynamic between the three, especially when they are on the boat after the shark, is captivating.

Then there’s the music. One of the most classic theme’s in movie history. Duh-dun. Duh-Dun. Once you’ve seen the movie, you’ll never forget what that theme is from. But there’s more to it than that and it really should be no surprise. John Williams is one of the most renowned composers of our time. As I watched the film this time around, I realized that there is a certain musical style to a Speilberg film. Upon doing some research it made more sense. I discovered that John Williams has done the music for all but two of Speilberg’s films (the two movies were Duel and The Color Purple.)

I think one of the things that makes this film is the suspense. They movie slowly unravels and you are a good way through the film before you even see a fin, more or less the whole shark. You are left guessing for a while what this man-eater looks like and how big it is. They also do a good job using the camera to give you a view from the shark’s angle. When the shark is swimming through the water, hunting for the next victim and you see the swimmer’s legs, you just want to jump into the movie and scream for them to swim the hell out of there!

I also liked the irony of the ending. The great shark hunter, Sam Quint, is eaten by the shark and the non-islander, Martin Brody, is the one who ultimately serves the shark his last supper–a compressed air tank.

Speaking of the tank, the film did a great job of foreshadowing by showing the tank in a few scenes, but never really realizing how important the tank would really be.

The Conversation

Finally! Here is a movie that we audio-geeks can get into. The Conversation, starring Gene Hackman, is based around the character Harry Caul. Harry is in the business of surveillance and is the “best on the West Coast,” according to his associate.

The movie opens with Harry and his associates trying to capture a “big, fat recording” of two characters walking around a square in San Francisco, but because each surveillance point cannot capture the full conversation without some interference. It is not until Harry returns to his lab to compile the recordings from the different angles into one coherent recording that we get to hear the full conversation that took place. For me, as an audio person, this was fascinating to watch. Not only how Harry spliced the recordings together, but the equipment he used was really a blast from the past. Sometimes we get so spoiled with computers and modern technology, we need to be reminded how it used to be done.

When Harry returns to his apartment and we see the lengths he goes through to secure his apartment, you start to see the irony of how someone who is in the business of peering into others lives is such a private person himself.

When Harry and his associates return from the convention to Harry’s lab and he and the woman wander off by themselves, I started to notice something. The way the camera pans over them the same way over and over again reminded me of a surveillance camera. You can see this method used in other parts of the film as well, like at the end after Harry has torn apart his apartment and is sitting playing his saxophone, the camera angle moves back and forth much like a surveillance camera would. This motif of repetition is a theme that Coppola says he wanted to explore in this film. The theme of repetition is also used in the film as the recording is played over and over again throughout the film, each time a little bit of discovery is made. We start to have an idea of what the ultimate outcome of Harry’s work will be.

We see the guilt eating away at Harry for an incident in his past and that he doesn’t want this job to be the cause for someone to get hurt again. He starts to have second thoughts about turning in the recording to the director, but is deceived and the recordings stolen from him that he guarded so closely. Desperate to keep the woman from getting hurt, he checks in to the hotel where he thinks she may be murdered. But in typical 70s film fashion where things are not what they seem, he soon discovers that the victim was not going to be the woman, but the director himself.

At the end of the film, Harry is playing his saxophone, when he receives a phone call telling him that they know that he knows the truth behind the death of the husband and that they will be watching him. They then prove it by playing a recording of Harry playing the saxophone from just moments earlier. Harry rips apart his apartment trying to find out how they bugged his apartment, but after literally ripping his place apart, cannot figure out how and the “best on the West Coast” is now a victim himself. We are left with Harry playing his saxophone, but for the first time, he is playing without the stereo. His privacy and paranoia has left him truly alone.