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Rating: Ask yourself honestly, have you really seen Taxi Driver?
(e.g., "Have I ever truly seen Taxi Driver?")
Yes, there's an enduring percentage that can tell me with supreme certainty that this has happened, but on the other hand, I wouldn't be so convinced: that is, I wouldn't be entirely persuaded that many have grasped what floats, acidic and fragrant in the air, along the greatest film ever conceived and structured by Scorsese (I know, I know, I'm so "hyperbolic," as some of you say, that I think I might take a stroll next to the Monza parabolic and leave a streak of saliva on it, just finishing the review, just for the whim of it).
But I intend to move on to the facts. And then to each their own judgment.
Proof n°1 - BERNARD HERMANN
Hermann was born in New York in 1911, and he isn't the first mediocre composer strolling along the Avenues of Soundtracks: I imagine you're aware he composed "little tunes" for masterpieces such as "Citizen Kane" (Welles), "The Magnificent Ambersons" (damn, Welles again!) and the spectacular background in the radio broadcast that turned over half of America pale with "The War of the Worlds," when he was working for CBS. But the best has yet to come for the pituitary, if I point out to you that the musical slashes of "Psycho" (Hitchcock) are his unhealthy creation. And "Journey to the Center of the Earth"? And "Fahrenheit 451"?
Proof n°2 - EXPERIMENTAL VEIN
But did you, I say, ever imagine that this character was among the first to best interpret the early prototypes of electronic instruments starting from 1948? Well, he was. Think of how he knew how to use the Theremin, especially in the "imaginary war" well narrated by Welles, later employed by loads of psycho-pork-progressive bands, forcing Moog to produce them in spades. Not to mention the pioneering use of instruments such as guitar, bass, and piano, electric (!). A true prophet.
Proof n°3 - "MUSICAL CHARACTERISM"
Where for "character actor," in reference to an actor, it is meant to allude to the expressive abilities they manage to obtain, through their degree of emotional-physical interpretation of the reference role, for "musical characterism," I, a poor fool, intend to define that magnificent ability (unique in him, and few others, Morricone for example) to know how to pass through the door that divides the film from reality, and immerse in it, to touch with hand what anyone else would not have the courage to notice, at best.
The music that gives life, shade, support, and scent/fragrance to this fabulous film, are in my opinion nonexistent in any other film and short, especially if you take into account that they coincide with the end of the life of his own composer, who died just a few days before the final editing of the film (1975), and thus forever unaware of what De Niro and the company left from that moment onward to cinema itself. Passages like "Thank God For The Rain," or "Diary Of A Taxi Driver," are nothing more than canoes of pure warmth, navigating the icy waters of an existence too contained, in an explosion phase, in the so well-known Travis Bickle, a real representative of humanity. And this mainly means one thing: Hermann believed strongly, incontrovertibly, almost silently, in what the screenplay by Paul Schrader intended to leave for the poor viewer.
Who among you has never felt a chill, who, I wonder, upon hearing Ferruccio Amendola's voice paraphrase post-apocalyptic tones, against the backdrop of those horns, those faded jingles, and at the same time so warmly mild, that only "Diary Of a Taxi Driver" has manifested? But yes, you got me. Right when the wandering Bickle rants about the fateful "night animals." Who among you remained immune to this? Come on, come forward, "supermen." I'll confess to you that I, in the precise proximity of that moment, in the fragments in which I need to revisit that scene for the billionth time, experience the materialization of the same sensations that disturbed me forever on a cold February night many years ago. My skin crawled, every attempt to emit air closed: a jolt of pure electricity traveled down my backbone to concentrate in the area that my brain uses to lock away the worst among the memories of my existence. This happened to me, and still happens to me, just when my organism demands it avidly.
If I was allowed to experience all this, I owe it to Scorsese, to Robert De Niro, and to the great Amendola. But nothing, and I repeat nothing, could have made it such without that formidable genius, that profound pioneer, that Dostoevskian animal that was Bernard Hermann with this unrepeatable soundtrack.
At times, I think about what my life would have been without ever reading "Crime and Punishment."
These are the times, when I forget about the drama I would have probably experienced without ever having listened to this unique attempt to dig the soul with spoonfuls of disjointed strings, and winds, and hinted drums, just to shake the soul. To show that it really exists. To imply that it rests guarded by our frustrations.
To make it clear that even nothingness can awaken it, and turn it into a power plant without equal.
Love included.
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