Friday, December 19, 2008

Film Noir Day Four: Psychotic, Suicidal Impulses and Taxi Driver

We wrap up this session on film noir with one of my favorite questions on any exam ever. There were seven topics from which to draw two, and after Point Blank, I chose this one. At the end of today's post-o-rama, I'll share the other five roads not taken. If any of you are interested in reading more about them, I'd be happy to indulge, of feel welcome to take a stab at them yourself.

But first, the final exam question, #9:

Taxi Driver is a neo-noir descended from the 50's film noir of "psychotic action and suicidal impulse" (Schrader). Elaborate on this statement and with reference to other, similar films situate Taxi Driver as a watershed noir in the historical development of this specific tendency (between 50's and recent noir).

The “psychotic action and suicidal impulse” that marks late term noir began not with a bang but a drink, a fatal one for Frank Bigelow. 1950’s D.O.A. is the first clear example of that shift in noir from one of hopeless optimism to bleak pessimism, culminating in violence in every direction. D.O.A., like The Big Heat and Kiss Me Deadly introduce audiences not to hapless losers but to men with nothing left to live for but destruction, men who have no time for femme fatales or murder schemes, even if their respective films offer up both. They lay the ground for Travis Bickle and Taxi Driver despite never committing fully to the nihilistic tendency.

Frank Bigelow is a dead man when viewers meet him in D.O.A.; he arrives to report a murder, and when the detectives ask him “who”, he replies “me”. The flashback prior to Bigelow’s poisoning is an elaborate game of misdirection, leading the audience to wonder how he came to be a walking “dead man”, but the key to D.O.A. is the moment he realizes there is no cure. Bigelow runs through the streets in a panic, trying to escape at all costs his fate.

When Bigelow finally accepts his fate, his character shifts from the classic noir type to a man on a singular mission: to find out who killed him and why. The film can be maddening, because despite this suicidal approach, Bigelow is somehow unwilling to take his death sentence to its extreme. When threatened by Chester the first time, Bigelow caves in and turns himself over. It is as though the conceit of the film is not enough to support a narrative structure, so writers Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene find excuses for Bigelow to be afraid of injury, despite the glaring evidence that he WILL die no matter what he does.

The Big Heat’s Dave Bannion becomes the psychotic hero not because he himself faces death, but because Mike Lagana and Vince Stone take everything away from him. Bannion is trying by the best of his ability to clean up a system afraid of the mob, and as punishment his wife is killed in an explosion meant for him. When his superior officers tacitly refuse to apprehend the guilty parties, Bannion resigns from the force, sells his house, hides his daughter, and sets out on what appears to be a suicide mission of vengeance.

And yet Bannion is not fully psychotic or suicidal. He abandons the system and makes strides that indicate to Stone and Lagana that he is not afraid to die, but by the end of the film, he returns to the Police Force, comfortable at his desk. Only Debby, Stone’s “girl” actually dies to stop any of the corruption. Bannion’s suicidal impulse transfers to here, absolving him of any guilt. Dave Bannion gets his vengeance without any of the blood on his hands.

If the classical era of noir actually has a psychotic (and suicidal) hero, it must be Mike Hammer of Kiss Me Deadly. Not only does Hammer not seem to care who he offends (police and criminals alike), but he brazenly pushes forward when it is clear he is mentally incapable of grasping the crime he nearly ran into. Hammer appears to care about superficial things in life: the top of the line car, futuristic apartment, the secretary / girlfriend who does his bidding. If another man insults him or stands in the way, Hammer simply beats him into submission and moves on.

Kiss Me Deadly comes the closest to Taxi Driver in that the consequences of Hammer’s actions have a (literally) explosive outcome; one that, depending on which version you see, kills Hammer and his secretary in the process.

Where Taxi Driver becomes the “watershed” noir for the psychotic action and suicidal impulse lies within Travis’s inability to do anything but destroy (himself or others). Bickle is, to put it simply, a weapon without a direction to point in. His disgust with New York is exacerbated by driving all over the city at night and dealing with the very worst it has to offer. In his spare time he stews, going to porno theaters without release or stewing at home, a veritable sty of fast food and garbage.

Travis Bickle does not have a femme fatale to draw him in, so he creates two: Betsy, a campaign volunteer for Senator Charles Palantine, and Iris, a child-prostitute. His “Madonna/Whore” complex becomes the catalyst for a purpose, although in both cases it is wholly destructive. Travis alienates both women, but directs his anger at the men they represent.

Without any interest for his own well-being, Bickle pushes forward to realize his goal of being a psychopathic killer. His rage at Betsy redirected at Palantine, Travis comes to believe that his act will have major repercussions, fixing a world he has no use for (and evidently no cure for). When he fails, instead of trying to adjust his mindset, the suicidal Bickle storms into the brother where Iris stays, killing Sport, her pimp, his boss, and the john with Iris in an outburst of blood and severed limbs.

Bickle, who sustains injuries in the shoulder and the neck, fully intends to kill himself as Iris screams beside him. Her salvation was not part of his plan, if he truly had one, and a lack of ammunition is his salvation, though he clearly has no use for life. The police, storming into the aftermath of Travis’s rampage, find him “shooting” himself in the head with his finger. Bickle, the suicidal psychopath, has finally lost it.

If there is any question that the epilogue to the film, which finds Travis back in good health and lauded as a “hero”, sullies this climax, consider the final moments of Taxi Driver. Bickle, who appears back to “normal”, drops Betsy off in his taxi and drives away. He catches something in the reflection behind him, and the “normal” façade drops. Adjusting the mirror, Travis sees only himself. His rehabilitation was not complete; the cycle will begin again, and next time it may not end happily.

A curious side effect of the psychotic action hero occurs less in neo-noir and more to this day in action films like The Punisher or Death Wish. The lone hero, which traces itself back to pre-noir detective films and has its own watershed moment with Dirty Harry, is a spin-off of this psychotic action and suicidal impulse. It continues to appear in neo-noir or noir pastiches like Sin City, but the current crop of post-classical directors seem to be more fascinated with revisionist takes on pre-1950s noir conventions.



And that's it for the exam. Other questions included:

3) Discuss the image and function of women in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat

4) Discuss Orson Welles' use of expressionist visual techniques in Touch of Evil, then compare the black and white noir aesthetics of Touch of Evil with the neo-expressionist use of colors and light in Taxi Driver.

5) In what ways is Chinatown a nostalgic homage to film noir? In what ways is it a revisionist neo-noir?

6) Explain why post-WWII Vienna is a particularly apt setting for the noir story of The Third Man? How does it serve to reveal and explore noir themes (male identity crisis, systemic corruption, and personal betrayal)? How does the set-piece chase sequence through the watery sewers of Vienna fucntion as a metaphor for the film's over-arching themes, and, more generally, as archetypal signifier of one of noir's most basic psychological motifs?

7) The set-piece opening sequence in Touch of Evil is famous. Explain why. Explain also why it is often considered as an exemplary utilization of cinematic techniques.

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