Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese) Title Sequence Analysis

 Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese) Title Sequence Analysis

Taxi Driver is a film directed by Martin Scorsese in 1976 starring Robert De Niro. It is considered among the best films ever produced because of its unique and unexpected plot line, inclusion of a young Robert De Niro and how it differed to any movie at the time.

The sequence starts off with a bare black screen with "Columbia Pictures presents” in the centre in red text. This sets an ominous and gory tone for the movie, which it later turns out to be, through the common link between the colour red and blood. Columbia Pictures is the production company which produced Taxi Driver. At this point, there is no music just complete silence. This adds to the sense of ominousness as the viewer has no indication of any aspects of the movie, apart from the red text and the knowledge of what the Production Company was called. The Columbia Pictures text fades out and the text “Robert De Niro in” fades in, in the same red blood-like colour. This tactic of mentioning a well known actor featured in the movie is to get people recognising the big stars. The makes the viewer excited to see the actor in the movie. When this text fades out, the iconic main title music from Taxi Driver fades in alongside a video of a classic yellow New York taxi, driving through a plume of smoke. This is a stationary shot and as the taxi starts to go out of the shot, the title text of “Taxi Driver” in LED text comes into shot. This is an example of editing as it is not actually an LED light, but one edited in. The smoke in this shot makes the viewer feel as if they are being smothered and that there is something they are not allowed to see. The music continues playing throughout this scene, however, after the car had passed and the title text had faded there was 1-2 second text overlays of the various actors in the film. The music in the shot is heavy, in that it has loud, triumphant sound, as opposed to soft and subtle music. 

The smoke scene fades into a shot between the eyes of a man. In addition, the music had faded out into a saxophone melody. This contrast makes the viewer feel slightly safer and calmer as the music prior was loud and ominous. This shot between the mans eyes goes on for 12 seconds and throughout there are different colours reflecting onto this mans upper face. This makes it look like he is driving in the night and the different signs and lights are reflecting onto him. It then cuts to a shot of the can windscreen, showing the source of the lights reflecting onto his face. Because the viewer gets a shot from inside the car, it brings a sense of safeness and cosiness through the way that the man is inside his car, warm and outside it is cold and raining. This goes on for another 20 seconds, however, 10 seconds into the shot, there is a change of music, back to the hectic and loud music heard at the start of the title sequence. Towards the end of the shot, there are views of other people walking at a traffic light, late at night, smiling and visually having fun. This makes the man focused on look like a castaway from society as he is not enjoying the night, but driving a taxi. The last shot is a faded cut back between the mans eyes, with a red light constantly on his face. In addition to the red text at the start of the film when introducing the actors and production company, there has been a large gore theme to this title sequence, connoting that there is danger coming for this man and that he is not safe.