50 years later: Is ‘Taxi Driver’ the greatest Palme d’Or winner of all time?
It’s been 50 years since Martin Scorsese released Taxi Driver – the movie that gave him the acclaim he’d long been working towards, as well as furthering Robert De Niro’s star power. It’s hard to imagine a version of Hollywood where Taxi Driver never existed.
Scorsese had released several movies before Taxi Driver, like his first De Niro collaboration, Mean Streets, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which won Ellen Burstyn the ‘Best Actress’ Oscar, yet Taxi Driver was arguably the turning point of his career.
Not only did it really solidify Scorsese’s style, but it also earned him the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. You could argue that Mean Streets was pivotal in gearing Scorsese up for Taxi Driver, with many similar themes of crime and morality at play, but there was just something about Taxi Driver, penned by Paul Schrader, that seemed to resonate with audiences the most, though.
Through Travis Bickle, we see a world of urban decay and utter decrepitude. As he cruises around New York late into the night, picking up pimps, prostitutes, dealers, and everyone in between, Travis is exposed to humanity at its lowest.
If this is America, then surely the promise of freedom and dream fulfilment has completely failed? Scorsese offers us a bleak portrait, one that inspires Bickle to increasingly lose his grip on reality.
But 50 years on, does it hold up as the best Palme d’Or winner of all time? Ask a cinephile to rank every Palme d’Or winner since the prize was first awarded in 1946, and you’ll likely hear Taxi Driver named in the top five, if not in the number one spot.
It certainly deserves to be near the top, because not only is it beautifully acted and directed – and who can forget Bernard Hermann’s incredible score? – but Schrader’s screenplay is so rich that with every rewatch, you can glean even deeper insights into Bickle’s uneasy mental state.
Can you call it the greatest Palme d’Or winner when it has such strong competition, though? The first ever winner of the prize was David Lean’s Brief Encounter, and it’s hard to argue with the brilliance of such a moving romantic masterpiece. And what about The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy’s French take on the Hollywood musical, painted in pastels and featuring one of the most quietly devastating endings in cinema history?
Other Palme d’Or winners include Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, the popularity of its racy content changing mainstream cinema forever by directly contributing to the demise of the Hays Code, and Federico Fellini’s iconic La Dolce Vita, one of the most celebrated Italian films of all time. That’s the thing – we wouldn’t have had Taxi Driver without the many great Palme d’Or winners that came before it, and their influence over Scorsese’s creation of his ‘70s masterpiece can’t be ignored.
Isn’t it all just a matter of opinion, though? How can we truly measure the greatest winner of the prize? Is it through influence? Technical brilliance? What the movie says about society, about cinema, about humankind? Subjectivity is always going to come into play when naming a ‘greatest something’, so for some audiences, Taxi Driver will hit the mark unlike anything else.
For me, the greatest Palme d’Or winner will always be Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders’ stunning portrait of isolation, family, American myth, and our complicated relationships with the past and its influence on the future. With some of the most spellbinding performances ever captured on celluloid from Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski, Paris, Texas is an artfully-made meditation on humanity at its most vulnerable and honest.
With an impeccably written script from Sam Shepard and an evocative slide guitar score by Ry Cooder, the atmosphere that Wenders builds is one of deep contemplation – the hope of redemption coincides with the knowledge that, ultimately, idealistic happy endings aren’t always possible, and it’s bittersweet.
Few films have affected me like Paris, Texas, and I think its emotional weight – without ever veering into mushy sentimentality – makes a compelling case for its worthiness as the ultimate Palme d’Or winner.
Taxi Driver certainly deserves a spot near the top of the list because you really can’t deny the influence that Scorsese’s masterful work of art has had, and the performances are next level, too. But it just doesn’t have that intimacy that makes Paris, Texas so special, and, in my opinion, the finest winner of the prize.
