(This is as well as actual diegesis - the soundtrack features car horns and a sidewalk snare drum player, as well as some snatches of dialogue.) The urban cityscape is also mirrored in the foregrounded brass (which is flat, harsh and anhedonic) and other instrumentation that mimics diegesis - harp glissandi, crashing timpani, amphetamine agitated snare flourishes - which trigger associations of burst hydrants, glittering street lights and the bustle of a city too wired to sleep. Hence the gradual and subtle repositioning of the main theme over the course of the film as the trumpets and trombones move dissonantly on to it. The romantic but exhausted sounding theme is Travis Bickle’s own brittle self-image - a reasonable guy who is surrounded by nothing but filth and degradation - with the brass mapping out the vast, traumatic psychological recesses into which he is collapsing. The standard interpretation is that the saxophone theme (played by Tom Scott, the hired horn used by Vangelis for Blade Runner) represents New York at night, with the brass section representing the psychological distress of Travis Bickle, but I see these roles as essentially two sides to the same coin. The effects conjured by Herrmann from two very simple musical strands are stunning (especially if you consider that it took just two days to put together the score). Such is the extent to which the score to this film is very much It’s Own Thing - it has always struck me as a shame that the track ‘Diary Of A Taxi Driver’ stoops to including some of De Niro’s oft-repeated/parodied dialogue from the film - a weirdly jarring move. It is the orchestral equivalent of time-lapse photography of a vase of flowers dying or a bowl of fruit succumbing to mould. But such is the intrinsic anxiety generated by the Taxi Driver soundtrack, that I find it difficult to listen to it on my own in the house at night. Other original soundtracks may shock with their use of jarring dynamics (some of the more notable ones composed by Herrmann himself), others may frighten the listener by provoking a Pavlovian response, while some pieces of music create genuine terror through sonic experimentation (the berserk and jerry-built “industrial noise” of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre springs to mind). I can’t think of many original orchestral film scores that are as unsettling and as terrifying in their own right as this one. On Christmas Eve, 1975, the very day after finishing the score, the 64-year-old composer went to watch rushes of his next job - Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To - and later that night, after dining with the director, he died in his sleep. But with Taxi Driver I still see him as going out at the top of his game. He was arguably the most famous person on the closing credits when it came out in 1976, given his CV included the scores for Citizen Kane, Psycho and Vertigo, not to mention cult-OSTs-in-waiting Twisted Nerve and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Herrmann was a Hollywood heavyweight with his legend already safely secured by the time Taxi Driver was filmed. Only the slow unfolding of time allows us to see Travis Bickle’s descent from chronically fatigued, PTSD suffering vet into hollow-eyed, nihilist vigilante - and only Bernard Herrmann’s astounding score can give musical expression to this transformation. Of course, Taxi Driver could not have worked in any other way. There is undoubtedly now an algorithm that is applied to scripts for “action movies” or “psychological thrillers” that would necessitate more violence earlier in the film while also demanding the frenzied conclusion be less visceral and morally blank in order for this idea to be considered financially viable. The film that made Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro would simply be considered too slow-paced. The script for Taxi Driver - or its modern equivalent - wouldn’t get as far as an A-list Hollywood director’s desk, let alone a soundstage, a post-production suite or test audience.
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