8mm Forum: Taxi Driver. 400ft Colour Sound.

This is topic Taxi Driver. 400ft Colour Sound. in forum 8mm Print Reviews at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on April 20, 2016, 03:15 PM:

This is a classic Martin Scorsese movie from 1976 starring the brilliant Robert De Niro & Jodie Foster.
With the help of Wikipedia here is the plot which is edited by me to only cover the 400 foot columbia release.
Travis Bickle, an honourably discharged U.S. Marine, is a lonely, depressed young man living on his own in New York City. He becomes a taxi driver to cope with his chronic insomnia, driving passengers at night around the boroughs of New York City and he keeps a diary which he voices throughout the film.
Travis is disgusted by the sleaze, dysfunction, and prostitution that he witnesses throughout the city, and attempts to find an outlet for his frustrations by beginning a program of intense physical training. Travis talks to an illegal gun dealer Easy Andy, from whom he buys a number of handguns. At home, Travis practices drawing his weapons and constructs a sleeve gun to hide and then quickly deploy a gun from his sleeve. Later, Travis hires Iris, a 12 year old prostitute, but instead of having sex with her, attempts to dissuade her from continuing in prostitution. He fails to completely turn her from her course,
After shaving his head into a Mohawk,
He later goes to the East Village and invades Sport's brothel. A violent gunfight ensues and Travis kills Sport, a bouncer, and a Mafioso. Travis is severely injured with multiple gunshot wounds. Iris witnesses the fight and is hysterical with fear, pleading with Travis to stop the killing. After the gunfight, Travis attempts suicide, but has run out of ammunition and resigns himself to lying on a sofa until police arrive. When they do, he places his index finger against his temple gesturing the act of shooting himself.
Travis, receives a letter from Iris' father thanking him for saving her life and revealing that she has returned home to Pittsburgh, where she is going to school.
Here is where this reel ends with the only part which lets it down,(as well as many other 400 foot reels), no end title in sight, just the usual FBI warning.

This cut down is one of the 400ft condensed series and supplied in the cardboard box, fortunately mine is in excellent shape and surprisingly, so is the film, no fade, very good sound and only minimal narration from that columbia narrator we all love to hate so much.
When this home version was released i do recall Bill Davidson explaining that there is a short sequence where Jodie Foster's character unzips De Niro's trousers which was cut here in the UK from the cinema release. Obviously it's all back in now and even shown uncut on TV. How times have changed.
This is probably one of the most violent cut downs ever released on super 8 but it is a dam good movie.

Posted by Pasquale DAlessio (Member # 2052) on April 20, 2016, 05:52 PM:

Are you talkiin' to me?

Posted by Adrian Winchester (Member # 248) on April 20, 2016, 07:08 PM:

Would love to find a non-faded copy, but I've failed so far. I once obtained one in one of the nice Columbia clamshell cases that they must have only used near the end, but that faded, so you can't assume that these are more promising than the earlier cardboard boxes.

As Tom's summary indicates, the editing very much concentrates on one thread of the story, that means much of the subtlety - and Cybill Shepherd's entire performance - is missing, but I think that's justified because at least this approach makes it coherent, even to someone who hasn't seen the feature.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on April 21, 2016, 01:16 AM:

Adrian, disappointing to hear so many have faded now, isn't it a pity they didn't do this as one of 3 x 400 footers, there's seems to be very little scorsese work on 8mm, or even De Niro films.

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