Double Bill: Rocky vs. Taxi Driver

Double Bill: Rocky vs. Taxi Driver

Despite not being born when it happened, I'm a big fan of 70s cinema. Cast your eye over the list of Best Picture nominees alone and many of them would be high up on lists of best films of all time. Take 1975 as an example: Jaws, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Dog Day Afternoon. I'm afraid that American Hustle and Gravity simply lack the same 'timeless' quality their 70s counterparts seemed to have in abundance. Will some self-righteous keyboard warrior such as myself be writing about them in 40 years' time? I doubt it. For a start, I'll likely be eating my meals through a straw and shouting at the pigeons by then...

But depending on your point of view, there was a grave injustice committed in 1976, where the Oscar committee saw fit to give the statue to Rocky (John G. Avildsen) ahead of Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese). Now don't get me wrong, both are fine films in their own way, and would make a brilliant double bill, but I think Taxi Driver is the better film, but only just. I'm going to have a look at both of them and try to decide who wins the fight between Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) and Rocky's Balboa (Sylvester Stallone).

Round 1 – Philadelphia vs. New York

Both films have a strong sense of place, integral to the story. Balboa's soul is being eroded by his job collecting debts for local mafia, such is the level of poverty in his town; something for him to escape from but simultaneously stay loyal to. Bickle's character is driven (pun intended) by his disgust for his city. New York is depicted as an endless, neon urban sprawl, full of sleaze and dirt. Balboa's Philly is a working class dead end from which he escapes, through sheer bloody hard work; the American Dream punched into reality. Bickle's New York is more of a nightmare, both literal and figurative. He wants change, he wants improvement; but it's not himself that he tries to change or improve; it's the streets.

Round 2 – Yo Adrian, You Talkin' To Me?

Rocky Balboa is so often defined by his relationship with Talia Shire's Adrian Pennino, always there to worry about him when he's having his ass handed to him, that it's easy to forget how they got started. A huge part of Rocky's charm comes from how clumsy and oafish Stallone makes him. He's a boxed and a mob enforcer but he's totally unthreatening. Seeing the big lug dance circles round the shy Adrian, nothing to say but never shutting up, is disarming and makes us love and root for him. He's a hero with a heart but before Adrian comes along, it's empty.

Bickle on the other hand is a masculine crisis personified. Cocooned in his cab, the wounded and disturbed Vietnam vet has nothing in his life but his impulse to lash out at society and in doing so change it for the better; his 'real rain to wash the scum from the streets' takes the form of vigilante violence. Any why? We aren't really told but presumably it's because he can't think of anything else to do. His abortive relationship with Cybill Shepherd's Betsy is uncomfortable to watch and highlights how isolated he is from the world. He needs a cause, something to live for and to fight for but can find nobody who wants his help. If only he'd taken up boxing...

Round 3 – Livin' In America...

While parts of Taxi Driver revolve around a political campaign, which Bickle volunteers for and then attempts to violently end, there's more going on here; there are differing ideological viewpoints. Rocky is a more traditional American, almost conservative film; it presents the idea that anyone, literally anyone, can succeed at anything, literally anything, if they try hard enough and believe. This is the standard excuse wheeled out to justify the inequities of capitalism time and time again: work hard enough and you'll be rich. Rocky works hard enough and he's fighting the champ (an implausible amount of luck aside). The film is smart enough not to give you the pay off you want when Apollo wins the fight (and I think this has contributed to the film's longevity; had he won, it would not have been as powerful), but ultimately Rocky Balboa personifies the working class Joe, for whom the American Dream is always just around that next corner...

Paul Schrader wrote a much more cynical view of the world in Taxi Driver. While the vigilante aspects therein could be read as conservative, that social problems can only be dealt with through violence, I would argue that it presents a more anarchic, almost nihilistic worldview. Where are the authority figures in Taxi Driver? Peter Boyle's older, wiser cabbie has no answers, Senator Palantine offers nothing for Travis to cling to, even Betsy has little to say. The wisest character in the film is arguably Jodie Foster's teenage prostitute. It also takes a very dim view of traditional relationships, highlighting how ill-equipped men are for them and how infantile they can be about sex. Bickle's spectacular lack of connection with Betsy, coupled with his infamous choice of first date venue results in rejection and anger. This episode says more about men than it does women; Betsy is a smart, sophisticated and ambitious woman, while Bickle is little more than a caged animal, sharpening his claws on the bars. By contrast, in Rocky the relationship with Adrian is sweet and charming, very much the emotional centrepiece of the film.

Round 4 – The Italian Stallion vs. God's Lonely Man

Where Rocky shows the importance of ambition, Taxi Driver highlights the lack of belonging and the destructive power of isolation; not exactly an endorsement of American rugged individualism. Neither protagonist really knows what else to do with their lives. Balboa punches folks and takes a beating, Bickle builds inexorably to a violent confrontation (unsanctioned by a boxing commission...). Despite the differences, their stories make for two of the greatest films made in a decade of great films. One, an American classic in which a man fights against the odds and triumphs (but doesn't win); the other, a more European-influenced film, non-narrative and meandering where a man tries to change the world and ends up changing absolutely nothing. He saves the girl but everything else is doomed.

Do yourself a favour and watch these two together. You can decide for yourself who deserved the Oscar (I'm deciding against both and giving it to Network) but I would recommend watching Taxi Driver first and Rocky second; you'll have a much happier ending!