Harry Buckle - Thriller analysis - Taxi Driver

The opening of Taxi Driver shows the spectator our protagonist, Travis Bickle, applying for a job as a taxi driver. As he answers questions, the spectator is given some character development.

• Characters
  - Travis, straight away, is shown to be slightly unstable. This is show though his emotions, switching from a blank face to a wide smile at the wrong times. This could also show that he's nervous about his interview or that he is mentally unstable from the time spent in the marines.

• Narrative
  - The dialogue between Travis and the Interviewer is purely for character development and to establish how he came about getting a job as a night time taxi driver.
  - The shot of the old man giving out orders to the taxi drivers over the microphone paired with the pan of the garage full of taxi and lazy taxi drivers makes a contrapuntal atmosphere that displays how easy or boring the job can be.
• Editing + Camera Work
  - The Graphic match of the exhausts fumes from the car and the cigarette smoke around Travis works as both a good transition and a way to connect the two together.
  - The Interviewer starts to tell Travis off for apparently insulting him some how and Travis apologizes for doing so, the camera pans into a close up shot of him. After this, his smile has gone and is only answering in a strict tone. This might show that he was becoming too confident and then was taken down to a more sincere level.
  - When Travis, tells the Interviewer that he was previously a marine, the camera pans upwards, suggesting that he is more trusting of Travis now that they both share a common past.
• Mise en scene
  - The room looks torn down and old, which shows the spectator that it isn't the nicest of places to work and might not be the most well paying jobs for Travis to be doing.
  - The Interviewer's table, is cluttered with papers and stationary, suggesting that he isn't that organized because of the amount of work he has to do.
• Sound
  - The sounds of yelled conversation in the back may show that the people who work there are constantly occupied or have to talk to a lot of people at one time. - The music playing as he enters the room starts as something you would expect to here as a policeman enters, but then turns into suspense-filled music that you would here as an antagonist is revealed.
  
  In conclusion, Although nothing much may seem to happen, we are shown that he is an ex-marine, which allows him to become sympathise by the interviewer, and that he is already showing signs that he might not be mentally stable.