Taxi Driver

Through their view of the city on the Hudson, the big names of the American author's movie have shaped the picture of New York that generations of viewers worldwide hold stored in their memories. Their stories, however, have also become a true school of urban sensibility. In their films, the anonymity of the big city is not a threat but a promise of good fortune – the prospect of random encounters, the possibility of alternative life-paths.

Taxi Driver

D: Martin Scorsese, USA 1976, 113 min, German subtitles

In Scorsese's classic about New York of the 1970s, sleepless Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro) drives his taxi through the night-time city longing to lash out in violence. With a screenplay by Paul Schrader, "Taxi Driver" is at once an homage to movie history, the case study of psychosis, and a social diagnosis of the Vietnam era.