‘Diary Of A Country Priest’: The religious French drama that directly influenced ‘Taxi Driver’
In 1976, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Paul Schrader unleashed their groundbreaking, brooding character study and blood-soaked crime thriller, Taxi Driver, into the world, catapulting the three creators into stardom and changing the face of cinema in the process. At the time, Taxi Driver was shocking, breathtaking, and controversial, but it has since become regarded as a masterpiece and one of the greatest movies to come from the golden era of American cinema.
The story follows Travis Bickle, a US veteran who served in Vietnam and returns to New York City, taking a job as a taxi cab driver. Unlike the rest of his colleagues, Bickle takes any and every passenger across the city and into the night, exposing him to the underbelly of the city, and, as he puts it, “all the animals come out at night—whores, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies”.
As Bickle cruises the city’s nocturnal labyrinth in his taxi, his insomnia-addled mind becomes gradually warped, and in his search for salvation and the emergence of a saviour complex, he descends into a realm of psychosis, resorting to extreme and violent measures.
It’s difficult to categorise precisely the themes of Taxi Driver; it’s part a complex character study that delves into the masculine male psyche, part a political commentary on post-war America and racism within society and a thrilling exploration of violence and eroticism. Many of these issues are addressed through Bickle’s rambling, deranged entries in his diary, which Scorsese brilliantly uses as narration throughout the film.
Interestingly, Scorsese was heavily inspired by Robert Bresson’s brilliant film Diary of a Country Priest and its use of narration for Taxi Driver. Made in 1951, Diary of a Country Priest follows a young French priest, played by Claude Laydu, who arrives in the country village of Ambricourt as the new parish priest. However, his arrival in the village is met with hostility and disdain from the local villagers and churchgoers, leading the young priest to question not only his purpose in the village but also his relationship with God.
The priest articulates his emotions by penning them in his journal every evening, a practice Bresson transforms into a continuous stream of consciousness, narrating a voiceover throughout the film. This became a profound influence on Scorsese, who implemented the very same approach when depicting Bickle’s daily diary entries.
Interestingly, the writer Schrader has said that the idea for Bickle to write in a diary each day was inspired by another Bresson classic, The Pickpocket. The film has some striking similarities to Taxi Driver, essentially following a lost and desperate young man who turns to crime in a desperate search for redemption. The master French filmmaker has clearly had a huge impression on both Scorsese and Schrader and has helped shape Taxi Driver into the magnificent film it became.
Today, revisiting Taxi Driver, cruising the sleaze-ridden mean streets of New York and voyaging into the terrifying psyche of Travis Bickle is still as visually arresting and gripping as ever, a true testament to the brilliance of its three creators.
