A well-oiled comedic machine

Once Warner Brothers’ The Jazz Singer debuted in 1927, the era of talking pictures was born, signaling an end to the dominance of silent movies. But Charlie Chaplin never got the memo. He continued making (mostly) silent films through 1936, as evidenced by Modern Times, released that year, and which celebrated a 90th birthday last month.

The film serves as a poignant critique of the dehumanizing effects of the Great Depression and the industrial age, following a nameless Factory Worker (Chaplin) who suffers a nervous breakdown due to the relentless pace of a high-tech assembly line. After a series of comedic mishaps involving a mechanical feeding machine and a stint in jail, he encounters “The Gamin” (played by Paulette Goddard), a homeless young woman fleeing the police after stealing bread. The two form an endearing partnership, struggling to survive and find employment in a harsh, automated world. Chaplin was partially inspired to muse on this subject matter after talking with Mahatma Gandhi and meeting with Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Bernard Shaw during a 16-month world tour when he traveled the globe following the success of City Lights (1931).

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Modern Times, conducted back in 2023, click here. To hear the latest Cineversary podcast episode, which celebrates the 90th anniversary of Modern Times, click here.

This is surprisingly relevant and evergreen for a 90-year-old movie, as Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance wrote: “Modern Times is perhaps more meaningful now than at any time since its first release. The twentieth-century theme of the film, farsighted for its time—the struggle to eschew alienation and preserve humanity in a modern, mechanized world—profoundly reflects issues facing the twenty-first century. The Tramp's travails in Modern Times and the comedic mayhem that ensues should provide strength and comfort to all who feel like helpless cogs in a world beyond control. Through its universal themes and comic inventiveness, Modern Times remains one of Chaplin's greatest and most enduring works. Perhaps more important, it is the Tramp's finale, a tribute to Chaplin's most beloved character and the silent-film era he commanded for a generation.

Debatably, this is Chaplin’s funniest feature film, comprised of unforgettable set pieces and scenarios. As with several Chaplin feature-length works, Modern Times is built around a handful of vignettes strung together, in this case four main segments: the factory, which includes famous bits like the Tramp trying to keep pace with an impossibly fast assembly line, passing through the gears and cogs of a giant machine, and being mechanically force-fed food; the jail, in which he enjoys being behind bars more than the chaos of the outside world and thwarts an escape attempt; the department store, where the Trap works as a night watchman and engages in a blindfolded roller-skating stunt; the machine works, where the Tramp gets his supervisor caught in the gears and has to feed him lunch; and the restaurant/nightclub, where he performs as a singing waiter.

The film sends off the Little Tramp character in grand style. “The unique triumph of Modern Times is that it maintains the playful aura of the early Tramp and the comedic sophistication of The Gold Rush and City Lights, all while carefully balancing the humor with sentiment, charm with political awareness,” per Criterion Collection essayist Saul Austerlitz. “It is Chaplin before life, and the world of which he was an ever more careful observer, began to weigh him down. With it, he bid a fond farewell to the silent film, and to the character who had made him the most famous man in the world. For Chaplin, it was the end of an era...It is a recapitulation of his earlier work, the director taking a triumphant final lap around the style he did so much to invent, before reluctantly turning to the new challenges of sound. In it, the Tramp bows one last time to the audience that has loved him so much, before disappearing forever.”

Many regard the music, composed by Chaplin, as the greatest score among all his films. This film introduced Chaplin’s melody for a later pop hit, Smile, to the world, which became one of the most beloved songs of the 20th century.

Fun fact: This is widely considered to be the last silent film produced by Hollywood, not including experimental works or spoofs like Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie. Although Modern Times includes some voices and sound effects, it plays and is intended as a true work of silent cinema. Yes, it serves as the only film in which the Little Tramp utters words, which occurs during the restaurant singing scene. Technically, however, the character is singing gibberish, not any comprehensible language. Interestingly, other than that nonsensical song, the only words spoken are delivered through a machine, such as the inventor speaking via phonograph and the factory owner talking through his screen, which serves as a thematic comment on mechanical soullessness. Per Rob Nixon of TCM, “Modern Times represents more than a refusal to move into talkies, for the film actually comments on sound and plays with the conventions of both silent and talking pictures. In exploring this new technology, the form of the film becomes part of the content and the story itself becomes a reflection of the cinematic ‘modern times,’ an observation on the increasingly mechanized, factory-like production of movies, something far removed from the improvisational and leisurely way Chaplin was accustomed to working.”

To create and distribute such a picture in 1936 – nine years after the introduction of sound in cinema – was gutsy but risky. The film proved to be a commercial success, earning $1.8 million in North American theatrical rentals and becoming one of the highest-grossing movies of 1936. Records indicate the film was the most popular title at the British box office between 1935 and 1936. Yet, although the movie performed well financially, its domestic earnings trended downward relative to the box office highs of Chaplin’s previous silent hits, The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931). By the mid-1930s, talking pictures had dominated the market for years, causing a shift in American tastes away from the traditional pantomime that had long been Chaplin's signature.

Modern Times shares striking aesthetic parallels with the degrading machinery of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and the factory-line satire of René Clair’s Liberty for Us (1931). The film also synthesizes the "man versus object" slapstick Chaplin perfected in his two-reeler The Pawnshop (1916) with the mechanical ingenuity seen in Buster Keaton’s The Scarecrow (1920). King Vidor's The Crowd (1928) also possibly influenced Modern Times through its stark, visual depiction of the individual as a tiny, replaceable unit trapped within a vast, soul-crushing urban and corporate bureaucracy.

The legacy of The Little Tramp’s swan song resonates through the somber, dignified visual framing of displaced laborers in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), the satirical take on poverty and transient life in Sullivan’s Travels (1941), and the repetitive, assembly-line nightmare of the Donald Duck cartoon Der Fuehrer's Face (1943). Its influence on Jacques Tati is evident in the rhythmic mechanical mishaps of Jour de fête (1949), the automated house gadgets in Mon oncle (1958), the dehumanizing glass-and-steel maze of PlayTime (1967), and the highway gridlock of Trafic (1971). Chaplin’s comedic DNA reached television through the frantic assembly line chaos of that beloved I Love Lucy episode and in the legendary opening of The Dick Van Dyke Show, where Rob Petrie’s famous trip over the ottoman serves as a direct homage to the Tramp’s pratfall in Modern Times. Woody Allen further channeled this bumbling subversion in the prison chain-gang slapstick of Take the Money and Run (1969) and the malfunctioning automation of the "Orgasmatron" in Sleeper (1973). Chaplin’s film also likely served as the spiritual blueprint for the surreal, soul-crushing workplaces in Brazil (1985).

With Modern Times, Chaplin made more of an overt sociopolitical statement in his art than ever before, against a backdrop of the Great Depression. Consider how he critiques corporate America, authority figures, the government, and law enforcement, while representing down-and-outers and commenting on the struggles of the working man, the dangers of dehumanization in a world of encroaching technology, and a social system tilted against the underprivileged. This is the film that contributed to the American government’s suspicion that Chaplin was a communist or at least a communist sympathizer. The key moment in Modern Times that his detractors would point to is when, in a classic comedic misunderstanding, the Tramp simply attempts to return a red warning flag that fell off a passing truck, only to inadvertently lead a surging crowd of unemployed protesters and find himself arrested as a communist agitator.

Also unusual for Chaplin, this movie has a strong female lead, the Gamine, who is arguably not a love interest but more a platonic partner who is from the same lower rung of the socioeconomic ladder as the Tramp. In past films, the Tramp often pined for more unattainable females. Additionally, many shorts and films featuring the Little Tramp end with him walking off alone. This movie concludes with him arm in arm with a partner. It’s also rare and gutsy for a 1936 film to include a cocaine comedy sequence. Depicting the use of illegal drugs would have normally been a no-no in the production code era.

The lessons here are obvious but evergreen: The dangers of increased reliance on mechanization, industrialization, and technology over human beings. Modern Times repeatedly demonstrates how technological advancement comes at a high cost to humans, particularly workers dehumanized and exploited by big business, and how we need to prioritize people and human ingenuity over machines or risk obsolescence. Deep Focus Review essayist Brian Eggert believes this theme is easily proven by the waif’s presence: “The Tramp and Gamine are like children, free of responsibility, while adults remain mindless and controlled automatons.”

Modern Times also plays as a classic David versus Goliath tale. “Industry, labor strife, and government are all the enemies of the common man. Chaplin has no suggestions for the masses, and can only offer his lumpen Tramp as an involuntary anarchist, knocked around like a pinball but always ready to bounce back…The theme is really innocent Tramp against the world,” according to DVD Savant Glenn Erickson.

We are reminded how good people pushed to extremes. Most characters in Modern Times, including the Little Tramp, the Gamine, and even the department store intruders, are good at heart but may have to break the law for basic needs like food and shelter during a time of extreme financial duress.

The Tramp and the Gamine are forced to be creative, improvisational, and cleverly spontaneous when put on the spot. They rise above their limitations with the help of pluck, inventiveness, and cunning, which espouses another key theme: grace under pressure.

Modern Times is also strongly concerned with time itself – being on time, punching the clock, watching the clock, and good and bad timing. There’s a strong focus on food, eating, or the lack thereof, with several comedic mishaps involving edibles. There is a distrust of and anger toward authority, especially police officers and bureaucrats. And this is a time of social unrest, as evidenced by depictions of work strikes, public protests, jailbreaks, and revolts.

History has been exceedingly kind to Modern Times, which in 1989 was honored as one of the initial 25 motion pictures selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, recognized for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Today, the film maintains a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes derived from 108 reviews, carrying a weighted average of 9.4/10. Metacritic identifies the film as having "universal acclaim," reporting an aggregated score of 96/100 based on the evaluations of four critics.

The American Film Institute ranked the production at number 81 in its 1998 list of the 100 Years... 100 Movies. In 2000, the AFI placed the film at number 33 on its 100 Years... 100 Laughs list. The movie moved to the 78th spot in the 2007 10th Anniversary Edition of the AFI list. The Village Voice conducted a critics' poll in 1999 that placed the film at number 62 on its list of the Top 250 "Best Films of the Century." In January 2002, the National Society of Film Critics included the work on its "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" list. The prestigious French publication Cahiers du cinéma voted the film number 74 on its 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Films." 

Meanwhile, in the 2022 Sight and Sound rankings, Modern Times was voted the 78th greatest film of all time in the critics' poll and ranked 46th in the directors' poll, maintaining its status as one of only nine silent films to remain in the top 100. In the 2012 Sight and Sound polls, the movie was ranked as the 63rd-greatest film ever by critics and the 20th-greatest by directors. In an earlier 2002 version of the Sight and Sound list, the film held the 35th position among film critics. A 2015 BBC poll of global film critics resulted in the film ranking 67th on the "100 Greatest American Films" list. In 2017, the BBC conducted a poll of 253 critics from 52 different countries, which voted the film number 12 on the list of the 100 greatest comedies of all time. And Time Out magazine ranked the film 49th on its 2021 list of the 100 best movies ever made.

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Train kept-a-rollin'

The General is widely considered Buster Keaton’s masterpiece and his most ambitious project among the 30-plus feature films he starred in, 12 of which he directed or codirected, and among the 70 shorts he appeared in. Sherlock Jr., The Navigator, and Steamboat Bill, Jr. are common contenders for that title, but most regard The General – which celebrates a vaunted Centennial birthday this year – as the standout among Keaton’s filmography.

Released in late 1926, The General is set during the American Civil War and inspired by the true "Great Locomotive Chase" of 1862. The film stars Keaton as Johnnie Gray, a deadpan Southern railroad engineer who loves two things: his fiancée, Annabelle Lee (played by Marion Mack), and his locomotive, The General. After being rejected from the Confederate Army because he is deemed more valuable as an engineer—a reason neither he nor Annabelle understands—Johnnie is branded a coward. However, he finds a chance for redemption when Union spies hijack The General with Annabelle accidentally on board. The plot follows Johnnie’s relentless, single-handed pursuit of the train behind enemy lines, featuring legendary, high-stakes stunts performed by Keaton himself, culminating in a heroic rescue and his ultimate acceptance into the military.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of The General, conducted earlier this month, click here. To hear the latest Cineversary podcast episode, celebrating The General’s 100th anniversary, click here.

This picture boasts perhaps the best combination of stellar production design, daring stunts, sophisticated narrative structure, and characterization/performance by Keaton among all his works. There are also a number of memorable comedic bits and running gags, including a dejected Johnnie sitting on the connecting rod of the locomotive’s drive wheels, his body rhythmically going up and down as the train moves; Johnnie attempting to enlist in the Army but being rejected, resulting in a crestfallen walk where he unknowingly marches in sync with a line of soldiers; Johnnie frantically running atop the moving train cars, oblivious to the fact that the rear half of the train has been uncoupled and is rolling away behind him; our hero hurling heavy fuel logs into the tender car, only for their impact to perfectly catapult other logs out of the pile and back onto the tracks in a frustratingly symmetrical cycle; while trying to load a massive cannon, Johnnie accidentally aiming it at his own locomotive, only for a curve in the track to save him at the last possible second; Johnnie using a long piece of timber as a makeshift lever to derail an enemy supply car, only to have the beam snap back and nearly take him with it; the stoneface tripping over and losing his sword multiple times; and Johnnie attempting to kiss his girlfriend while simultaneously swift-saluting every passing soldier, resulting in a mechanical, repetitive display of affection and duty.

Indeed, this could be the greatest silent comedy of all time. Consider that only around 25% of all films made during the silent era have survived; Thankfully, The General is one of them, and it remains one of the most beloved, accessible, and evergreen titles in the silent canon – a fantastic starting point for introducing new generations to the artistry and entertainment value of silent cinema.

This was an epic production, especially for a comedy, 100 years ago, and one of the most expensive and logistically difficult pictures of its era. With a budget estimated upwards of $750,000, the film reenacted Civil War battle sequences on a massive scale for a motion picture, using up to 1,500 extras and 3,000 people on payroll. The production purchased and refurbished full-size 1860s-era locomotives and filmed for about five months on location near Cottage Grove, Oregon. Its most famous sequence — the deliberate wreck of a burning locomotive into the Row River — cost approximately $42,000, making it the most expensive single shot in silent film history. The high production values, larger budget, grand scale, and attention to detail and period authenticity are evident onscreen a century later, helping The General stand the test of time as an entertaining and historically important movie.

This is also one of the all-time great chase films ever made. Arguably, The General plays better today as a romantic adventure than a comedy. It may not be as funny as some of Keaton’s other works, and it’s not a consistent laugher from beginning to end (the first major laugh, a pratfall off the porch, doesn’t occur until about six minutes in); but the chase sequences and high-risk action make for a compelling watch in 2026, particularly considering the limitations of that silent era and the extent to which Keaton was willing to take chances.

Additionally, the film is fascinating today as a historical artifact unto itself, not just as an adaptation of a historical event. “Like many silent films, The General offers things to a modern viewer that would not have been apparent to anyone seeing it in theaters during its original release,” wrote critic James Berardinelli. “The first is the pleasure of watching how the tale was realized by men and women working nearly a century ago. The second is observing the accuracy of what has become a distant historical event from the perspective of those living only 60-odd years after-the-fact. (At the time when The General was made, there were still people living who had fought in the Civil War.) The General is arguably more valuable as a historical document than a fictional feature.”

The Library of Congress took notice. In 1989, The General was honored as one of the inaugural films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, alongside first-year inductees like Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, Singin' in the Rain, Star Wars, and The Wizard of Oz. Additionally, the film’s critical legacy is cemented by its high placement in the decennial Sight & Sound polls, where international critics ranked it #8 in 1972, #10 in 1982, #32 in 2012, and #95 in 2022. The American Film Institute listed the film as #18 on both its 2000 "100 Laughs" and its 2007 "100 Movies" anniversary lists. The General was featured in Time Magazine’s "All-Time 100 Movies" list and its top 100 actors list (with Keaton ranking #35), and was named as the #1 silent film of all time by the Silent Era database. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently holds a near-perfect 93% score.

The story was inspired by and adapted from an 1889 memoir by William Pittenger based on a true train Chase event that happened during the American Civil War. The cinematography and look of the picture drew influence from Matthew Brady’s work as a Civil War photographer.

Impressively, despite the special-effects limitations of its day, The General prefigures later chase pictures like North by Northwest (1959), Bullitt (1968), The French Connection (1971), Duel (1971), The Blues Brothers (1980), The Road Warrior (1981), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). One could further connect the dots between Keaton’s locomotive actioner and the opening chase sequence in Sullivan’s Travels (1941), the high-stakes railway tension of The Train (1964), the thrills and massive crash showcased in Silver Streak (1976), the mechanical chaos and high-speed suspense of Runaway Train (1985), the elaborate comedic choreography of The Wrong Trousers (1993), the intense train stunts featured in The Fugitive (1993), the track-switching gags of The Legend of Zorro (2005), the visceral desert convoy battles of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and the harrowing practical train-top set pieces of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023).

Perhaps it’s a stretch, but this film may have even inspired The Dukes of Hazzard TV show that ran in the early 1980s. Both feature an iconic Southern vehicle named "General" as a central character, and both rely on vehicular slapstick and relentless chase sequences, where resourceful underdogs use their machines to outmaneuver authority figures were made to look like bumbling amateurs in a series of perfectly timed physical gags.

Although it’s not a remake, and it tells the tale from the Union’s perspective, the story was retold as a straight historical drama by Walt Disney Pictures in The Great Locomotive Chase (1956).

Jackie Chan has often cited Buster Keaton as his primary influence, adopting the silent star’s talents for performing his own death-defying, practical stunts while using the surrounding environment and everyday props to create meticulously choreographed action-comedy sequences.

Keaton was dubbed “the great stoneface” because he maintained a blank countenance, allowing his body and kinetic movement to elicit emotion and audience response instead of his facial expressions. Trained as a vaudeville acrobat and gifted with natural athletic talents, he wasn’t afraid to perform death-defying stunts and acts of derring-do as a performer and character.

“Watching Keaton today, we realize that he's the most modern of all silent screen masters,” wrote DVD Journal reviewer Mark Bourne. “His ongoing travails at the whims of The Machine — meaning his beloved mechanical contrivances as well as Nature or "the Establishment" — make him our contemporary…there's something about Keaton's restrained, underplayed determination as he faces each new obstacle that feels refreshingly timely. The Little Tramp was Chaplin's ‘Everyman,’ self-consciously created to embody all people from all times…But it's Keaton's innocent yet unflappable achiever we more identify with. As Keaton himself put it, ‘Charlie's tramp was a bum with a bum's philosophy. Lovable as he was, he would steal if he got the chance. My little fellow was a workingman, and honest.’ We feel for the Tramp, but we want to be like Keaton.”

Keaton fans can tell that this was a real passion project for the filmmaker, one that he relished and was ultimately most proud of. That’s because the filmmaker adored trains and was a student of history. Rejecting the artificiality of studio backlots, Keaton invested a staggering $42,000 to acquire three authentic 1860s locomotives and relocated his entire production to Oregon to capture a landscape that mirrored a pristine, 19th-century Georgia. This commitment to realism led him to shun miniatures for the film's climax, famously opting to incinerate a full-sized train and collapse a wooden bridge into the Culp Creek riverbed to achieve genuine mechanical destruction. He treated the locomotives as essential costars, ensuring that every track switch, uniform, and coupling rod met a standard of period accuracy virtually unmatched in the silent era.

Interestingly, Keaton and his collaborators changed the story to make it more of an underdog narrative. The real-life event that inspired the movie was the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862, a daring Union military raid in which a group of men hijacked a locomotive called The General in Georgia with the intent of destroying the Western & Atlantic Railroad, only to be pursued over 87 miles by Confederate conductor William Fuller in a relentless chase involving multiple stolen trains. In the film, however, Keaton plays a Confederate hero opposed by Union antagonists, and we root for him and his mission against the Northerners.

Production of The General proved much more challenging than his previous pictures. There were a number of accidents during filming that ballooned the budget. A train wheel crushed a brakeman’s foot, resulting in a costly lawsuit; an assistant director was shot in the face with a blank cartridge; several fires were caused by the wood-burning engine of the primary train used, blazes that spread to the surrounding countryside and cost thousands to extinguish; additionally, Keaton was knocked unconscious during one scene.

Keaton risked his life several times during the shooting. He sprinted across railcar roofs and sat on a side-coupling rod – a stunt filmed in a single take where one mechanical slip or wheelspin could have proved fatal. He even perched on the engine's cow-catcher to hurl one railroad tie at another to clear the tracks, a precisely timed feat where any error in strength or coordination would have resulted in a deadly derailment. As was true of his earlier films, he performed all of his own stunts without a double.

Keaton certainly suffered for his art. Because the film was not a box office success, was costly to make, and didn’t garner widespread praise from critics, Keaton was stripped of his creative freedom after producer Joseph Schenck sold the star’s contract to MGM, which effectively ended Keaton’s era of independence and control over many of his earlier pictures.

The narrative structure of The General is crafty. Consider how action and events in the first half of the film are echoed in the second half, with clever reboots of the humorous bits you saw earlier on display, only with the protagonist more firmly in control. “There's an impressively classical symmetry to The General's construction,” per BBC reviewer Tom Dawson. “In the first half, Keaton's hero Johnnie Gray heads northwards in pursuit of the enemy soldiers, amusingly encountering various obstacles en route, such as slashed telegraph wires, switched points, uncoupled carriages and logs thrown onto the track. And in the second half, the roles are reversed and Johnnie is now fleeing southwards from the Yankees, deploying the very props that had previously hindered his progress to great comic effect.”

By using the railroad tracks as a literal and stylistic guide, Keaton adroitly used extended tracking shots to immerse the audience in a visceral sense of speed and momentum that defined the movie's comedic rhythm. To maximize the visual scale of his battles, Keaton ingeniously recycled a limited number of extras by filming them marching in one direction as Union troops, then swapping their costumes for Confederate gray to have them retreat across the frame from the opposite side. And ponder how sparingly the filmmakers use intertitles, allowing us to focus firmly on the visuals and appreciate this as a work of pure cinema where images, not words, tell the story.

At its heart, The General espouses the value of resourcefulness and ingenuity under pressure and the importance of adapting to your environment. According to Keaton scholar Noël Carroll, “The most recurrent themes in Keaton’s narratives and gags: the question of mastering and understanding causal relations in a world of things, on the one hand, and the question of correctly locating and precisely orienting oneself within one’s environment on the other hand.”

The General’s most generous endowment to us that it serves as a timeless testament to the spirit of the everyman underdog. Time and again, Johnnie – and, by extension, Buster Keaton – demonstrates resourcefulness, inventiveness, and improvisational genius in solving one challenge after another. Yes, these feats of daring and industrious virtuosity are in service to the comedy, as laughs are the prime fuel that propels this locomotive of levity. But, despite being vastly outnumbered by his adversaries, it’s Johnnie’s clever spontaneity and heroic resolve that capture our imaginations – as well as Keaton’s gift for adroitly manipulating his physical environment and different objects within to create unforgettable kinetic visual sequences and high-speed tension. A flesh-and-blood little engine that could, he acrobatically outwits his pursuers and reminds us of the inestimable value of ad-libbed action. When the chase begins, he does what he must to keep pace, from vigorously pumping away at a handcar to pedaling furiously on a penny-farthing bicycle. Johnnie sneaks his girl away in a sack, litters the tracks with obstacles to thwart his enemies, in the nick of time removes their obstacles (while sitting on the cowcatcher of the moving engine) to prevent a deadly derailment, and sets the Rock River Bridge afire – the visual coup de grace and his shrewdest sabotage. The descendants of Johnnie’s legacy of pluck and verve are evident in more modern screen characters, from Indiana Jones to Die Hard’s John McLean to Mad Max to Jackie Chan in Police Story to little Kevin McAllister in Home Alone. We salute you, Buster, and all the wonderful cinematic iterations that walked in your shoes.

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Cineversary podcast honors 100th and 90th birthdays of The General and Modern Times

In Cineversary podcast episode #92, host ⁠Erik J. Martin⁠ puts candles on two cakes: one for Buster Keaton’s The General, celebrating a 100th birthday, for which he is joined by Thomas Doherty, a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University; and Charles Chaplin’s Modern Times, marking a 90th birthday, for which Erik is accompanied by film historian Jeffrey Vance, author of the book Chaplin: Genius Of The Cinema. Erik and his guests explore how these masterworks by the two greatest silent film comedians have aged so gracefully, their impact on cinema, key thematic takeaways, and much more.

To listen to this episode, click here or click the "play" button on the embedded streaming player below. Or, you can stream, download, or subscribe to Cineversary wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Learn more about the Cineversary podcast at www.cineversary.com and email show comments or suggestions to cineversarypodcast@gmail.com

Thomas Doherty
and Jeffrey Vance

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Elections have consequences – and Payne points

The midterm elections are still several months away, but it’s never an inopportune time to revisit Election (1999), helmed by Alexander Payne. The plot revolves around Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), a respected but increasingly frustrated social studies teacher who develops a deep-seated vendetta against Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), an intensely ambitious overachiever running for class president. To thwart Tracy's unopposed victory, Jim manipulates Paul Metzler (Chris Klein), a popular but dim-witted football player, into joining the race, which eventually spirals further when Paul’s cynical younger sister, Tammy (Jessica Campbell), enters the fray on a platform of total apathy. As the election approaches, Jim's professional ethics and personal life begin to unravel, culminating in a desperate act of sabotage that explores the messy intersection of ambition, ethics, and human frailty.

To listen to a CineVerse group recording of Election, conducted last week, click here.

Compared to other movies set in and about high school, Election is a cut above. It emphasizes strong character development, depicting multidimensional personalities. It doesn’t rely on clichés, formulaic plots, predictable teen sex, and overworn adolescent conflicts. Controversial and overlooked subjects are tackled, including lust and sex between students and teachers, the futility of student government, teenage sexual experimentation, and corrupt faculty. In this way, the comedy isn’t always safe and comfortable. (Pay attention to the clever way apples are motifs used in this movie, which signify not only “teacher’s pet” but sexual temptation.)

Refreshingly, the adolescent perspective isn’t the only one given a lens. There are actually four different narrators at different points. This highlights the complexity of the narrative's perspective, reflecting the evolving impressions formed about each major character by the end of the film. Rather than relying on simple archetypes, the story examines whether individuals appear sympathetic or despicable, ultimately ensuring that no character is unfairly targeted. By presenting every figure with a balanced mix of flaws and strengths, the film avoids a cynical or malicious tone and refrains from gross exaggeration.

This is actually less a movie about high school than personality types. Yet it’s all the more admirable because it casts the actor who portrayed Ferris Bueller – the ultimate 1980s high school rebel – in an opposite role.

Every teen comedy touches on sex at some point: Payne’s film is honest in its approach to sexuality, while other high school films resort to cuteness, crudeness, female objectification, and male gaze conventions. Indeed, Election is progressive for a 1999 picture in its nonjudgmental depiction of a closeted lesbian teenager. Additionally, in the years since its release, Flick can be viewed more sympathetically, especially in a post-Me Too world where audiences are more critical of older men trying to sexually exploit younger women. (Consider that, in 1999, the age of consent in Nebraska, where the story is set, was merely 16.)

Election is practically dripping with irony and satire, and the targets skewered are plentiful. Firmly in the crosshairs are elections and politics in general, and the pointless popularity contest nature of many of these races, on both small and national levels. “Election is on one level a merciless Alaska of the impossibility for America to move beyond two-party partisanship,” per Slant Magazine reviewer Eric Henderson. Consider that this story was influenced partially by the 1992 presidential race, especially the emergence of Ross Perot. In the years since, the film has been dubbed prescient in how Tracy Flick and her ambition loosely resemble Hillary Clinton.

Other satirized subjects include self-serving individuals always looking out for no. 1; cheaters who violate McAllister’s “morals and ethics” to get what they want; life in bland, monotonous suburbia; the ruthless cruelty of teenagers; and pathetic men in midlife crisis mode trying to maintain a locus of power and machismo.

Similar works

• Heathers (1988)
• Fargo (1996)
• Rushmore (1998)
• Ghost World (2001)
• Mean Girls (2004)
• Thank You for Smoking (2005)
• The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

Other films directed by Alexander Payne

• Citizen Ruth (1996)
• About Schmidt (2002)
• Sideways (2004)
• The Descendants (2011)
• Nebraska (2013)
• Downsizing (2017)
• The Holdovers (2023)

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Colonialism's comeuppance

Directed by the legendary John Huston, the 1975 adventure epic The Man Who Would Be King brings Rudyard Kipling’s classic novella to life, exploring the intoxicating and destructive nature of colonial ambition. The narrative tracks the exploits of two rogue former British soldiers – the charismatic Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) and the pragmatic Peachy Carnehan (Michael Caine) – as they journey beyond the borders of British India to the remote, primitive wilderness of Kafiristan. Their goal is to exploit local tribal warfare to establish themselves as god-like rulers and plunder the region's legendary riches; however, their grand scheme begins to unravel when Dravot starts to believe his own myth of divine kingship. This shift leads to a tragic collision between their misplaced hubris and the cultural realities of the land they sought to conquer.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of The Man Who Would Be King, conducted last week, click here.

This is a great buddy picture, in the tradition of masterful movie pairings like Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, and Paul Newman and Robert Redford – all of whom were originally considered for these roles. Some believe that the casting should have been reversed: that Caine should have played Daniel and Connery would have been a better Peachy. Others suggest that the casting was appropriate because it enabled these actors to slightly play against type.

Thematically, this film fits neatly into Huston’s filmography – another example where he explores the different sides of morally shadowy characters, as evidenced in earlier pictures like The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, and Prizzi's Honor. Huston – and source author Kipling – present Peachy and Daniel as likable underdogs and clever entrepreneurs of adventure, personalities we are supposed to identify with and root for. But their avaricious objectives, devious maneuvers, and manipulative ulterior motives can turn modern audiences off and put us firmly on the side of the natives.

Due to the numerous unbelievable close calls and strokes of good fortune that the duo experience – from sneaking past the Khyber Pass, avoiding a snow avalanche, and surviving a deadly arrow, to the opportune presence of English interpreter Billy Fish and the coincidence of Daniel wearing a pendant with the same Freemasonry symbol that matches the stone carving the high priest reveals – it can be difficult to take this narrative seriously. In some ways, it feels more like a karmic farce or a comedic cautionary tale.

Interestingly, Kipling himself serves as a framing device. Films like The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Words, Adaptation, The Princess Bride, and Finding Neverland also utilize the original author as a framing character who directly narrates or participates in the unfolding of their own creative work.

The Man Who Would Be King is a classic cautionary tale about the repercussions of exploitation, arrogance, and hubris. While Daniel and Peachy are ultimately punished for their actions, this is, however, a story that was written during a time when the British Empire was still a powerful force driven by colonialist and imperialist aims – a mindset that motivates the two main characters. Their greedy and opportunistic ambitions, which might have been more embraced by the mainstream in the 20th century, play as corrosively dated today. The duo’s attempts to kill, conquer, subjugate, and plunder from the indigenous peoples of a third-world country make them far less sympathetic characters nowadays.

The narrative also explores the risks and rewards of casting your fate to the wind. Peachy and Daniel completely abandon their previous lives in Britain and agree to embark on a perilous adventure filled with dangerous obstacles and a low chance of success. Their role of the dice eventually pays off, but their fate turns sour; Daniel is killed, and Peachy barely survives. If we are reminded that there’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Daniel and Peachy learn the hard way that some things are too good to be true, and you can’t get something for nothing.

It’s a fine line between civilized and savage, this picture would have us believe. Daniel and Peachy are educated, sophisticated, articulate, and well-mannered Brits, a contrast to the often shocking barbarism exhibited by the natives. Daniel exercises what many would believe to be a fair form of social justice as king. But their condescending attitudes and self-superiority toward the people of Kafiristan demonstrate that they possess an intellectual savagery that can be just as harmful.

Similar works

• The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
• Lost Horizon (1937)
• Gunga Din (1939)
• The Four Feathers (1939)
• Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
• The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• Zulu (1964)
• Lord Jim (1965)
• The Wind and the Lion (1975)
• Fitzcarraldo (1982)
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
• Mountains of the Moon (1990)
• Three Kings (2000)
• The Lost City of Z (2016)

Other films by John Huston

• The Maltese Falcon (1941)
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
• Key Largo (1948)
• The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
• The African Queen (1951)
• The Misfits (1961)
• Prizzi's Honor (1985)
• The Dead (1987)

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Araby proves that titles can be deceiving

With a title like “Araby” (original title Arábia), you might expect a film hailing from the Middle East. Yet this is actually a Brazilian drama co-directed by João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in February 2017 (before receiving wider release in 2018). Set in an industrial town in Brazil, the picture begins with a teenager named Andre, played by Murilo Caliari, who is asked to collect the belongings of an injured factory worker, Cristiano, portrayed by Aristides de Sousa. After discovering Cristiano’s handwritten notebook, the narrative shifts into a reflective, memory-driven account of Cristiano’s life over the previous decade, tracing his travels across Brazil, his struggle with poverty and unstable work, fleeting relationships, and his search for dignity and purpose. Along the way, the film introduces characters such as Ana (Renata Cabral) and Renan (Renan Rovida), creating a layered, humanist portrait of working-class life that unfolds as a story within a story.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Araby, conducted last week, click here.

Interestingly, the proper story doesn’t even begin until 22 minutes into the film, which is when the title credits appear and the point when the narrative shifts from the adolescent Andre to Cristiano, whose diary Andre discovers and reads. It’s a curious way to open the movie, leading to expectations that Andre is the main character, which he is not. Consider, as well, that the picture starts with an American song, “I’ll Be Here In The Morning,” by Townes Van Zandt, a puzzling choice for a film set in Brazil. The title of the film is also peculiar, as this film and story have nothing to do with Arabia, but instead is based on the same title by James Joyce in Dubliners, his collection of short stories (Araby as a title also reminds us of the joke shared by one of Cristiano’s friends).

This is a work of slow cinema coupled with social realism and political humanism. Long takes, minimal editing, and a lack of plot make for a slow burn. The consistently somber tone and downbeat ending add to the authenticity. Like real life, not much happens while at the same time plenty happens, depending on the value you place on even the most mundane encounters and conversations Cristiano partakes in.

“Araby is at once a highly concrete piece of realism…and deeply poetic,” wrote Film Comment essayist Jonathan Romney. “The realism comes from the docudrama attention to all the working-class nonprofessional players encountered along the way, and from the unobtrusively compelling central presence of Aristides de Sousa. He’s usually undemonstrative to the point of seeming an absence—just the observing consciousness in front of which all these events roll by—but once in a while he gets to emote more effusively…The poetry partly comes from the style, and from certain heightened images—notably an intermittent series of chiaroscuro still-life shots, like a crumpled plastic water bottle against the hanging sleeve of a blue work jacket. It also comes from the tender, wistful music.”

Look closely enough and you’ll see that this is an autobiography, a dystopian adventure story, a romance, a thriller, a musical, a character study, and a comedy (one of the highlights of the film, and arguably its funniest moment, is when Cristiano and an unnamed worker exchange opinions about the worst ways to sleep and the worst things they’ve carried).

Araby also undercuts our expectation for a thrilling twist or moral crisis. There’s an unforgettable moment in the middle of the story when Cristiano presumably hits someone while driving on a dark, desolate road. He drags the obscure body into a lake or river, never to speak of it to anyone. The insinuation is clear: Even if Cristiano isn’t committing a crime, his prospects are grim were he to alert the authorities, which highlights the precarious lives transient workers live and how the deck is consistently stacked against them.

“We sow so much, but reap so little,” the film’s most memorable line, also underscores its most prominent theme. Araby traces the challenges of a hard-luck laborer as he travels episodically across Brazil seeking work. We observe how hard Cristiano toils, often for little to no wages, and cannot establish roots or nurture long-term relationships. This film documents the struggles of the working poor and the economic disparity they encounter as they eke out hardscrabble lives in which the balance of power is tilted strongly against them.

We are continually reminded that the underprivileged face greater obstacles. Araby shows how, lacking economic and employment stability, the underclass are at a disadvantage, vulnerable to homelessness and sickness. Ultimately, Cristiano dies of an ambiguous cause, although it was likely something related to the hazards of working at the aluminum factory or accumulated damage to his body over the years toiling for similar employers. Recall, also, how Andre and his younger brother live near the aluminum factory, which emits toxic airborne particles – possibly the cause of his younger sibling’s illness.

Additionally, Araby emphasizes that every life has a unique story worth documenting and appreciating. Andre discovers Cristiano’s journal and reads about the man’s travels, encounters, and relationships as he works in various hard labor capacities across the country. Every stop on his journey is a memorable vignette filled with fine details and distinctive faces, underscoring that no life or experience is insignificant, even if you are one of society’s overlooked or forgotten members. We are reminded that we are the authors of our own stories, and every person has a tale to convey.

Similar works

• The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
• Works of Italian Neorealism, like Shoeshine (1946), Bicycle Thieves (1948), and Umberto D. (1952)
• Barren Lives (1963)
• Five Easy Pieces (1970)
• Iracema: Uma Transa Amazônica (1975)
• El Norte (1983)
• La Ciénaga (2001)
• Train Dreams (2002)
• Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures (2005)
• The Kid with a Bike (2011)
• Neighboring Sounds (2012)
• Neon Bull (2015)
• Zama (2017)
• Nomadland (2020)
• Written works by Jack Kerouac, Joseph Conrad, Roberto Bolano, and John Dos Passos

Other films by João Dumans and Affonso Uchoa

• Aquele que Viu o Abismo (2024)
• As Linhas da Minha Mão (2023)
• Seven Years in May (short, 2019)
• The Hidden Tiger (2014)

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Aggression as art: the enduring unnerving brilliance of Taxi Driver

It’s rare for a film released 50 years ago to be as visceral, controversial, and disturbing today as it was back in 1976. But such is the case with Taxi Driver, the gritty psychological thriller directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader, and starring Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle – a lonely, insomniac veteran who becomes a night-shift taxi driver to cope with his chronic sleeplessness. As he witnesses the perceived moral rot of the city's streets, his mental state progressively deteriorates, leading him to a violent path of attempted vigilantism. His descent is punctuated by his failed attempt to court a political campaign worker, Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), and his obsessive, ultimately bloody quest to "rescue" a child prostitute, Iris (Jodie Foster), from her manipulative pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel).

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Taxi Driver, conducted last week, click here. To hear the latest Cineversary podcast, which celebrates this film’s golden anniversary, click here.

Let’s give Taxi Driver its props: This is widely considered one of the best films of the 1970s and perhaps Scorsese’s finest picture of that decade. It’s a work that boasts one fantastic scene and quotable line after another, most notably the “You talkin’ to me” monologue in front of the mirror. And it abides as an endlessly fascinating psychological portrait. Quentin Tarantino said it “may be the greatest first-person character study ever committed to film.” Deep Focus Review essayist Brian Eggert believes that “not knowing what precisely drives him is what makes Travis in the film so compelling… That which we know about what occurs in the film is vast, but that which we do not know is even greater…Just enough about Taxi Driver is known and maintained within the consciousness of popular film culture that we keep returning to it in hopes of figuring it out, but more importantly, figuring out what it means to us.”

This is the film that established Robert De Niro as a generational talent, marking the first starring role where he commanded universal attention. The brooding, haunting music of Taxi Driver proved to be the final score for legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann, who completed it just hours before he passed away. Not long thereafter, it won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, and the film received four nominations at the 49th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jodie Foster), and Best Original Score (Bernard Herrmann). Back in 1994, Taxi Driver was even selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically" significant.

Today, the picture holds "universal acclaim" on Metacritic with a score of 94 out of 100, and an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In prestigious polls, Sight & Sound named it the 29th-best film ever (critics) and 12th-best (directors); Time listed it as one of the 100 best films of all time; The Village Voice ranked it 33rd on its "Best Films of the Century"; Empire ranked the film 17th on its "500 Greatest Movies" list and Travis Bickle 18th among the "100 Greatest Movie Characters"; Time Out named it the #1 greatest movie set in New York City; and the BBC ranked it 19th on its "100 Greatest American Films" list. The American Film Institute has recognized the film extensively, slotting it #47 on the original 100 Years...100 Movies list and #52 on the 10th Anniversary Edition, placing it #22 on its 100 Thrills list, naming Travis Bickle the #30 greatest villain, ranking the quote "You talkin' to me?" #10, and nominating the film for 100 Years of Film Scores. Industry players have honored the work, as well, with the Writers Guild of America naming the screenplay by Paul Schrader the 43rd-greatest ever and the Directors Guild of America ranking the film the 44th best-directed of all time.

Screenwriter Paul Schrader crafted the story based on his own lonely experiences in New York, writing the script following a divorce and a period of homelessness, fueled by chronic insomnia and late nights in pornographic theaters. “What I learned while writing the script is that this was about a man who suffered from the pathology of loneliness,” Schrader recalled. “He wasn’t lonely by nature; he was lonely as a defense mechanism. And he reinforced his own loneliness by his own behavior. And the pathology grew until it became malignant and violent.”

He blended these personal memories with diverse cultural influences, including the Harry Chapin song Taxi, the Robert Bresson films Diary of a Country Priest (1951) and Pickpocket (1959), and John Ford’s The Searchers (1956); Schrader mirrored the narrative framework of the latter by transforming John Ford's archetype of the alienated, war-hardened veteran into Travis Bickle, whose obsessive, violent quest to "rescue" a young girl from a perceived social underworld reflects the same dark "savior" complex and psychological instability seen in Ethan Edwards. Schrader also utilized the diaries of would-be assassin Arthur Bremer and modeled the story's "media hero" conclusion after the public fascination with Sara Jane Moore following her attempt on President Gerald Ford’s life.

For his part, Scorsese said he was inspired by several previous films, including Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956), Le Samourai (1967), and A Bigger Splash (1973). Ever the cinephile, it’s easy to spot classic noir influences on the director, as Taxi Driver exudes a cynical and downbeat worldview, depicting an urban setting as rife with decay, crime, and exploitation. An especially noirish scene is when Scorsese makes a cameo in Bickle’s cab, threatening to violently exact revenge on his cheating wife spotted in a window silhouette across the street, a sequence punctuated by Hermann’s ominous score. This sequence is perhaps a sly inside baseball nod to Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Window, which we hear Scorsese name-drop. One could also argue that Betsy and Iris are unwitting femme fatales leading Bickle to danger and destruction. Additionally, DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson called Bickle a “film noir loser hero, the kind that subconsciously wills his own failures.”

Some argue that Taxi Driver is part of the vetsploitation subgenre of films exploring the "ticking time bomb" archetype of the scarred Vietnam veteran using military training to wage vigilante wars, as seen in early titles like The Born Losers (1967), Targets (1968), and Billy Jack (1971). You could also make a case that this film could be classified in the vigilante subgenre, which focuses on individuals who bypass a failing legal system to dispense personal justice, often amidst a backdrop of rising crime and societal collapse, as evidenced in earlier works like Dirty Harry (1971), Walking Tall (1973), and Death Wish (1974).

In the years following the release of Taxi Driver, we got films with similar characters, situations, and themes, including American Gigolo (1980), Paul Schrader’s first sequel in his "Night Worker" trilogy, which explores a stylish but isolated loner; The King of Comedy (1982), a spiritual companion piece featuring a socially inept protagonist obsessed with celebrity and criminal recognition; Light Sleeper (1992), in which an insomniac drug dealer maintains a diary while navigating a lonely, late-night existence; Bad Lieutenant (1992), a gritty portrait of a self-destructive officer’s moral collapse in a decaying New York; Falling Down (1993), wherein a frustrated everyman snaps and embarks on a violent, vigilante journey across Los Angeles; Léon: The Professional (1994), which mirrors the Travis/Iris dynamic through a socially stunted hitman who protects a young girl; American Psycho (2000), which examines the internal monologue and deteriorating sanity of a man leading a double life; Drive (2011), depicting an enigmatic driver who uses sudden, explosive violence to protect those close to him in a criminal underworld; Nightcrawler (2014), featuring a sociopathic loner who prowls the city at night, driven by a dark, obsessive ambition; You Were Never Really Here (2017), wherein a traumatized veteran rescues girls from trafficking, echoing Travis Bickle’s specific trauma and mission; and Joker (2019), a direct homage depicting a marginalized man’s transformation into a violent symbol of urban unrest.

The level of graphic violence and disquieting sexuality in Taxi Driver is extreme, even by today’s standards. The film would have received an X-rating had Scorsese not agreed to desaturate the colors during the final shootout and make the blood look less realistically red. Consider that this film depicts a white man killing a black man, the gruesome shooting of several men while a preteen girl watches, and an unsuccessful suicide attempt by Bickle. Bickle is also a character with obvious racial prejudice against African-Americans. What’s more, Jodie Foster was only 12 years old during filming. Subjecting a child actress to this kind of subject matter and violence and casting her as a child prostitute remains a questionable choice. Fortunately, the filmmakers took great steps to prevent her from being traumatized by having her psychologically tested and providing a social worker on set. Still, consider that both Scorsese and Schrader were not nominated for Academy Awards for this film, which suggests how uncomfortable the movie made Academy voters.

Most controversially, Taxi Driver motivated John Hinckley Junior to attempt an assassination on President Ronald Reagan in 1981 after re-watching the film numerous times and being obsessed with Jodie Foster. The media scrutiny that followed caused Scorsese to question whether he wanted to continue to make films. Additionally, Bernhard Goetz became a modern-day Travis Bickle in 1984 when he shot four teenagers on a New York subway, justifying the violence as a preemptive strike against perceived "filth." Driven by the same self-righteous alienation as the fictional character, Goetz viewed his explosive actions as a necessary "cleansing" of a city he felt the authorities had failed to protect.

There are so many directorial choices by Scorsese to admire. First, ruminate on how Scorsese and his collaborators benefited from great timing, choosing to film on the West Side of New York City during a summer when the Big Apple was teetering on bankruptcy, a widespread garbage strike resulted in trash piling up everywhere, and an oppressive heat wave plagued the city.

The director and his team conjure up unforgettable imagery, creating a visually evocative landscape filled with steam-seeped streets, an unhealthy neon glow illuminating the nighttime urban jungle, inky blacks obscuring the spaces between faces, shady and dangerous denizens walking about, drab apartment interiors, and cab windshields splattered with dirty water or hurled garbage.

In an interview, Scorsese said: “Much of Taxi Driver arose from my feeling that movies are really a kind of dream-state, or like taking dope…And the shock of walking out of the theatre into broad daylight can be terrifying. I watch movies all the time, and I am also very bad at waking up. The film was like that for me—that state of being almost awake.”

Scorsese’s camera brilliantly captures seemingly random images of street life, kinetic vehicles, and cultural diversity on display. There’s a fantastic brief segment where rhythmic editing juxtaposes the changing cab fare meter with streetlights, facial close-ups, and other imagery in rapid-fire succession, and a later marvelous montage where we observe Travis target-practicing at a gun range, polishing his boots, burning flowers, and sharpening his knife. Other curious shots spring to mind, including the slow zoom in to a glass filled with fizzing Alka-Seltzer. And the delayed but shocking reveal of Travis’ mohawk haircut is further testament to Scorsese’s visual storytelling savvy.

One of his most impactful decisions was to consistently present Travis’s POV, especially as he observes sex workers, pimps, and various passersby. He does this occasionally in slow motion, an effect that suggests Bickle is out of sync with the rest of the world and preoccupied with what he sees as degenerates, criminals, and human threats. Roger Ebert wrote: “One of the hardest things for a director to do is to suggest a character’s interior state without using dialogue; one of Scorsese’s greatest achievements in Taxi Driver is to take us inside Travis Bickle’s point of view.”

Interestingly, Scorsese includes one scene not shown from Bickle’s perspective: Sport and Iris slow dancing and embracing in their private space. Although this choice is inconsistent with the rest of the film, having Travis absent reinforces the notion that Iris is truly being exploited by a gaslighting groomer and manipulator – not just in Travis’ mind. This knowledge makes us root for Travis in his quest to liberate Iris.

Scorsese also cleverly uses his camera in ways that further underscore Bickle’s misanthropic, unsettling nature, his inability to communicate, and the way he makes the viewer feel uncomfortable. Recall how, early in the film, the camera momentarily detaches from Travis, panning across a row of vehicles in the taxi garage before reuniting with him as he reaches the exit. Soon after, we observe a lap dissolve that essentially "jumps" the viewer forward in space, transitioning from a wide shot of Travis on the pavement to a tighter, more immediate framing of him in the same location. Perhaps most famously, Travis is shown at a pay phone pleading with Betsy to return his calls, but the camera pans right, forcing us to gaze down a bleak, empty hallway toward the street traffic in the distance – as if the camera or the filmmakers are either too embarrassed or disgusted to linger any further on this pathetic figure.

Importantly, the director includes an occasional voiceover, bringing us further into Travis’ unhinged mind and causing us to question how dependable this narrator is. Often, the inclusion of a voiceover in a film signifies that the character speaking aloud is trustworthy, empathetic, and endorsed by the filmmakers, but, as Slant Magazine critic Rob Humanick put it, “Taxi Driver doesn’t ask that we embrace or approve of (Travis’) disturbed worldview, only that we see through his eyes enough to experience this particular circle of hell.”

It’s fascinating that De Niro went full method in his approach to Bickle, securing a taxi driver's license and, during filming breaks, transporting actual passengers around New York. He completely inhabits this role and looks absolutely believable in the part. Recall how DeNiro never completely turns around to communicate with passengers inside his cab. He plays Bickle with clever ambiguity so that you’re never quite sure what truly drives his impulses or makes him tick; his portrayal teeters between the extremes of dangerous psychopath and good Samaritan, with plenty of shades of gray but also ample character flaws, like loathsome bigotry and social ineptitude.

Foster, meanwhile, is a precocious revelation as Iris. Casting a 12-year-old remains a cringeworthy decision, but it lends valuable gravitas to the depravity of the situation and the exploitative nature of prostitution. Cybill Shepherd shines as Betsy; her radiant beauty makes us believe that she would fuel Travis’ obsession. And Albert Brooks, in his debut feature film performance, adds needed comic relief touches to an otherwise disturbing and depressing narrative.

Taxi Driver is a film brimming with cautionary concepts. First and foremost, it’s about the repercussions of loneliness and the inability to communicate and connect with other human beings. Bickle, primarily a solitary figure through most of the narrative, refers to himself as “God’s lonely man,” remarking that “Loneliness has followed me my whole life.” A telling exchange is when Travis can’t seem to properly express his angst when talking with Wizard, saying, “I just wanna go out, and you know, like, really... Really... Really do something.” According to Ebert: “The film can be seen as a series of his failed attempts to connect, every one of them hopelessly wrong. He asks a girl out on a date and takes her to a porno movie. He sucks up to a political candidate but ends up alarming him. He tries to make small talk with a Secret Service agent. He wants to befriend a child prostitute, but scares her away. He is so lonely that when he asks, ‘Who you talkin’ to?’ he is addressing himself in a mirror. This utter aloneness is at the center of “Taxi Driver”…perhaps it is why so many people connect with it even though Travis Bickle would seem to be the most alienating of movie heroes. We have all felt as alone as Travis.”

Culpability by warped association is another thematic notion. Bickle’s distorted morality leads him to judge Betsy and Iris as either guilty or innocent based on their associations with, respectively, Palantine and Sport – two men Travis deems as corrupting, controlling father figures who contribute to the city’s despicable state and are deserving of his extreme form of justice. Travis first views Betsy as an angelic and alluring love interest. But when Betsy sours on him, he sours on Palatine and warns her, “You're in a hell, and you're gonna die in a hell, just like the rest of 'em.” Travis then turns his wrath on Palantine, the man Betsy is working for and the perceived barrier separating them. Next, Travis channels his energies toward saving Iris, a young prostitute being exploited by her pimp. After his assassination attempt of the senator is thwarted, Travis immediately redirects his violent intentions toward Sport. Travis makes illogical connections between both father figures, likely due to coincidence and timing. Recall that Iris enters Travis’ cab and is yanked away by Sport immediately after Palantine is Travis’ passenger. In that scene, we hear Travis tell Palantine, “This city here is like an open sewer, you know, it's full of filth and scum..Whatever becomes the President should just - really clean it up.”

Another core finding, if you look closely enough: fatalism as a defense mechanism. “Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me,” Travis says. This mindset gives him a sense of purpose and frees him from accepting personal responsibility for the violence he believes he’s been preordained to deliver. By framing his path as an inevitable destiny rather than a series of choices, he transforms his social alienation and mental instability into a heroic mission. Lacking free will, Travis is no longer a man losing his mind, but a tool of fate directed to cleanse an irredeemable city.

Taxi Driver also enjoys dabbling in cosmic irony. “The five-minute epilogue underscores the vagaries of fate,” critic James Berardinelli posits. “The media builds Bickle into a hero, when, had he been a little quicker drawing his gun against Senator Palantine, he would have been reviled as an assassin. As the film closes, the misanthrope has been embraced as the model citizen—someone who takes on pimps, drug dealers, and mobsters to save one little girl.” In the final scene, Travis appears more balanced and well-adjusted as he drops off Betsy. Yet, our last glimpse of Bickle shows a concerned face doing a double take as he suddenly notices an unseen object in his rearview mirror, insinuating that the ticking bomb in his noggin that had been turned off is now wound up again. The “bad ideas in my head” that he warned about earlier may have returned, and a new cycle of violence and unruly behavior could be just around the next turn. Schrader seconds this notion in a DVD commentary, rejecting the theory that the shootout, aftermath, and calm epilogue comprise a dream sequence; instead, he sees a circular pattern in which the final frame “could be spliced to the first frame, and the movie (starts) all over again.” Only next time, Bickle won’t be the hero.

Attentive cinephiles perceive plentiful examples of prescience and foreshadowing layered throughout the film. Taxi Driver continually hints at things to come later, with mirrored motifs and callbacks. For example, Travis’ fellow cabbies give him the nickname “Killer,” which proves apropos. We observe several different characters – Travis, the cabbie Charlie T, and Sport – use their hands as finger guns, prefiguring the real handguns we’ll later see used. We hear Travis say, “Someday, a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets”; in a subsequent scene, we observe his windshield doused with water from a hydrant. Tom says earlier, “If a thief screws up on the job, they'll blow his fingers off”; later, we witness Travis actually shoot the fingers off the timekeeper character. In his cameo, Scorsese says he’s going to use a .44 Magnum on his wife, one of the same types of guns Travis ends up purchasing. That same unnamed passenger uses the “N” word when referring to his wife’s lover, feeding into Travis’ growing racism toward African-Americans.

One of Taxi Driver’s greatest gifts to us, 50 years onward, is its opacity as a trustworthy text. Scorsese and Schrader provide ample evidence to intimate that Travis is an unreliable narrator. Cases in point: We are not even sure he is talking to Betsy on that payphone. The flowers he supposedly sent her have apparently never been delivered, as we see decomposing bouquets in his apartment. He claims to be an honorably discharged Marine, but this may be all fabricated; the olive drab M-65 field jacket he wears, featuring a "King Kong Company" morale patch and a pinned parachutist badge, could have been purchased at a resale shop. We observe Travis watching American Bandstand on television, but the song they are dancing to is not the same song we hear (Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky). Travis constructs a false identity for his parents, claiming he is involved in sensitive government work to mask the reality of his mundane taxi shifts; he further fabricates to them a successful romance with Betsy, ignoring the fact that his social deficiencies have already destroyed the relationship. These blatant lies prove that his narration is a performance of normalcy, used to hide his growing instability even from those closest to him. Truth is, we can’t even trust the denouement: The supposedly heroic conclusion in which newspaper headlines celebrate Travis’ vigilantism could actually be a feverish "death dream" or a psychological projection of his need for acceptance; ponder, after all, how implausible it is that Travis would be legally exonerated for all the violence he caused or would not eventually identified as the attempted assassin of Palantine. We can’t even be sure that’s Betsy in the backseat in the final scene.

Yet it’s Taxi Driver’s “aggression artistry” that perhaps lingers longest in the conscious and subconscious. The “Are you talkin’ to me” moment is legendary, but the most impressive sequence from a direction standpoint is the shootout, which begins with a tracking camera shot of Travis approaching the “timekeeper” (who rents out the rooms to Johns) and shooting his fingers off with the .44 Magnum; we see quick images of the corridor and a door, behind which is a stunned Iris and the bespectacled mafioso. Over the next several seconds, we observe an array of medium close-ups and mid-shots of Travis pointing and blasting his gun, juxtaposed with reverse shots of Sport returning fire and dropping dead. Travis drops the .44, and the camera tilts up to his face. There is a semi-overhead shot from the top of the stairs, and we witness him fire three more rounds with a smaller gun. The wounded timekeeper follows Travis up the stairs in a heated rage. We get a slow-motion shot of the mafioso emerging from the room upstairs, sending a bullet into Travis’ shoulder before the mohawked vigilante deploys another firearm hidden up his sleeve and blows away the mobster – who falls back into Iris’ room as she screams. Travis drags the timekeeper into the room with him, and then we’re served another rapid-fire volley of medium close-ups opposite mid-shots as Travis stabs the old man’s hand with his secret knife. A frenetic tilting camera shows Travis shooting the timekeeper in the face, followed by Iris’ horrified reaction. 

Attempting suicide, Travis pulls an empty trigger and collapses onto the couch. Free of music up to this point, Hermann’s woozy score suddenly ignites, replete with dreamy harps and shrill horns, and the camera shifts to slow-motion mode. Police officers, weapons brandished, enter the space. We got an extreme close-up of Travis finger pistoling at his head (is he begging the cops to shoot him dead?). Next, there’s a fantastic overhead shot that pans the room counterclockwise, revealing every inch of carnage, tracking itself out the doorway (is Travis dying and his spirit leaving his body?). Retracing the path of violence, we digest a slow dissolve montage of grotesque imagery from a steadily moving camera – viscera on the walls and stairs, and lingering shots of bloody, bullet-ridden dead men that could actually be more distressing than the brutal shootout itself. Few filmmakers have ever orchestrated extreme violence more masterfully than what Marty accomplishes in this seven-minute symphony of savagery.

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Cineversary podcast marks 50th anniversary of Taxi Driver

Eddie Muller

In Cineversary podcast episode #91, host ⁠Erik J. Martin⁠ sends 50th birthday wishes to Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese. Accompanying him on this anniversary cab ride is TCM host and Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller. Erik and Eddie examine how Taxi Driver has stood the test of time, why it’s worthy of celebration five decades later, its impact on cinema, key thematic takeaways, and much more.

To listen to this episode, click here or click the "play" button on the embedded streaming player below. Or, you can stream, download, or subscribe to Cineversary wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Learn more about the Cineversary podcast at www.cineversary.com and email show comments or suggestions to cineversarypodcast@gmail.com.

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Troll mates

When you think of famous and unforgettable sex scenes in movies, sequences like the intense encounters in Basic Instinct (1992), the iconic pottery wheel moment in Ghost (1990), the same-sex connection in Brokeback Mountain (2005), the urgent coitus in A History of Violence (2005), the romanticized carriage encounter in Titanic (1997), and the controversial realism found in Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) spring to mind. 

But perhaps the most head-turning erotic scene depicting two characters doing the deed can be found in the Swedish fantasy thriller Border, directed by Ali Abbasi and released in 2018. The plot centers on Tina (Eva Melander), a socially isolated customs officer possessing a supernatural ability to smell human emotions like guilt and fear. Her mundane existence – spent living in a strained relationship with her layabout partner, Roland (Jörgen Thorsson), and visiting her ailing father (Sten Ljunggren) – is upended when she encounters a mysterious traveler named Vore (Eero Milonoff). Vore not only shares her distinct, unconventional physical traits but also challenges her understanding of the world by revealing their shared identity as (wait for it…) trolls, forcing Tina to choose between her loyalty to humanity and her true, primal nature.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Border, conducted last week, click here (if you get an error message, simply try refreshing the page).

Border defies easy categorization. It’s a mashup of many different genres and subgenres. It’s a fantasy film, body horror movie, romance, police procedural, coming-of-age picture, family drama, superhero origin film, arthouse indie, and even a work of queer cinema. But the film doesn’t immediately reveal that it’s a fantasy; it imbues social realism and matter-of-factness, especially early on as we see Tina at work as a security officer and at home with Roland – enough to make us believe that this is a plausible narrative about a specially gifted person perceived as ugly and how she will cope with this existence. It becomes so much more as the story unfolds, she is increasingly paired with Vore, and the troll revelation happens – with various aspects of troll mythology explored, including an appetite for maggots and insects, terror of lightning, and the human fear of changelings.

The aforementioned intimacy sequence involves strange, hidden sex organs and a lovemaking ritual we didn’t see coming. There’s also ample female nudity without being exploitative or titillating. The acting by Melander, combined with the Oscar-nominated makeup effects, makes for a fascinating character in Tina, who emotes more with her nostrils and upper lip than most thespians do with their entire face.

While the main plot and the prosecuting pedophiles subplot are intriguing, our primary fascination is with the relationship between Tina and Vore and the undeniable chemistry between these characters.

Fittingly titled, this film examines the border between the normal and supernormal, reality and myth, and human and animal. “A gnome or a changeling is an embodiment of the messy border between humanity and nature, the town and the forest, the rational mind and the sensual body. That’s perhaps why such creatures often inhabit liminal spaces—such as the trolls that harass those who try to cross the bridge under which the creatures dwell,” per Slant Magazine reviewer Pat Brown. “There’s something out there that Tina’s looking for, somewhere beyond the border between the human world and nature, and in one of the film’s most evocative shots, she reaches out toward a fox gazing into her bedroom from just beyond the window.”

Border is also a rumination on otherness and the physical and sociocultural differences that make us each unique, which can cause social rejection –cleverly using allegory to touch on topical sociocultural matters. “It’s about transgression and taboo, crossing borders and infringing limits: about culturally constructed wrongness and socially deplored differentness,” wrote Peter Bradshaw, critic for The Guardian. “Apart from everything else, it’s a satirical reflection on the minority experience, perhaps also inspired by the director’s own feelings about being an Iranian who has studied and now lives and works in Denmark.”

And this is unmistakably an identity crisis picture. Tina wants to learn who she truly is and came from. She discovers her true name is Reva, and her parents were used in experiments and tortured. She also learns, by the conclusion, that she is arguably more human – at least morally and emotionally – than she likely expected. She tells Vore at their last meeting, “I don’t want to hurt people. Is that human?”

(Spoiler) The conclusion, with a fellow troll – perhaps Vore –gifting her a baby troll, suggests that she can stay true to her identity, support and nurture her kind, and have a child after all (even though she was told she can’t bear children); but it also intimates that she can pass on some of the human traits she prefers to the next generation.

Similar works

• Let the Right One In (2008) – A cold, realistic Swedish reimagining of vampire mythology centered on childhood loneliness, which is also based on a story by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
• Under the Skin (2013) – A visually striking "alien amongst us" story exploring humanity from a detached, outsider perspective.
• Raw (2016) – A visceral French coming-of-age horror using physical transformation to explore repressed desires.
• Lamb (2021) – An Icelandic folk-horror tale blending quiet domesticity with the discovery of a mysterious, uncanny newborn.
• The Shape of Water (2017) – A darkly textured romance between a societal outcast and a creature defying human classification.
• Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017) – A gritty Mexican urban fairytale mixing cartel violence with haunting supernatural elements.
• A Ghost Story (2017) – A meditative look at a non-human perspective and the experience of being "othered" by time.

Other films by Ali Abbasi

• Shelley (2016)
• Holy Spider (2022)
• The Apprentice (2024)

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