When I heard Columbia Pictures was releasing a new print of Taxi Driver to celebrate the film's twentieth anniversary, I had mixed emotions about seeing it. Taxi Driver is my favorite movie of all time, a film I viewed so frequently in the years immediately following its 1976 release that I stopped counting when the meter clicked into double digits. No other film -- for that matter, no other work of art in any medium -- ever affected me as deeply; to say the movie touched a nerve would be to understate its impact on my life. (If you've seen the film, you know this means I was one disturbed little camper.) But I haven't watched it in maybe a decade, although I still own two copies of the video and one audiocassette of the soundtrack. Too painful.
But watching a videotape is one thing, and viewing a freshly restored print of the film with a digitally remastered (the first time ever in stereo!) soundtrack at an actual theater is something else entirely. So I went. The remastered version really highlights legendary composer Bernard Herrmann's moody, portentous score, which was already a major character in the film. Visually, the movie looks about the same, which is to say dark as hell. I wondered if pulling the new print directly from the original camera negative was going to brighten things up a little, make the colors more vibrant A sort of like the restored sections of the Sistine Chapel. No chance. Much of Taxi Driver takes place at night or in the shadows of dimly lighted rooms, hallways, and movie theaters. This new print confirms Taxi Driver's status as one of the darkest movies ever made.
But while the sound and visual clarity have improved, not one frame of the actual story has been added or deleted. Self-described "God's Lonely Man" Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) still decries the squalor surrounding him while he battles insomnia by driving his cab through the rain-slicked, garbage-strewn streets of New York City at night. He still fails miserably in his attempts to woo Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), the preppy campaign worker and unattainable ice princess. He still liberates twelve-year-old hooker Iris (Jodie Foster) from her smooth-talking pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel). And Travis still slips into and out of that vacant-killer grin, solicits advice from fellow cabbie the Wizard (Peter Boyle), and listens nervously while an angry passenger (Scorsese) discloses his intention to murder his adulterous wife.
Twenty years later Taxi Driver still packs a mean wallop. The film -- so controversial upon its release for its gritty realism, its bloody climax, and its cynical coda -- retains the power to shock and unsettle viewers. Contrary to the claims of the film's detractors (many of whom came out of the woodwork following John Hinckley's Bickle-esque assault on President Reagan in an effort to impress Jodie Foster), Taxi Driver is not a call to arms for nut cases. It's more of a warning: Modern life generates too many Travis Bickles -- anonymous, powerless little guys who can call attention to themselves only by picking up a gun. That admonition is every bit as valid today as it was two decades ago, just as Martin Scorsese's hypnotic direction, Paul Schrader's incisive writing, and Robert De Niro's incendiary performance have stood the test of time.
Taxi Driver isn't the only digitally remastered cult film currently enjoying a revival at movie theaters. But at least devout fans of Scorsese's brutally realistic drama have had the opportunity to watch it on video. The same cannot be said for Heavy Metal, the animated 1981 soft-core sci-fi odyssey based on the magazine of the same name. Over the last decade, however, Heavy Metal has been the single most active title in Columbia Pictures' entire library, a staple of midnight shows at theaters around the nation. While groundbreaking for its time, Heavy Metal has since been eclipsed in terms of both innovative animation and erotic content, especially by the new wave of sexually and violently graphic Japanimation. But Heavy Metal maintains a loyal core of fanatic devotees who can't get enough of its half-dozen interwoven sci-fi, fantasy, and sword-and-sorcery story lines, as well as its charmingly dated soundtrack featuring tunes by early Eighties arena rockers such as Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, Sammy Hagar, Nazareth, and Journey. Rumor has it that it's still a good movie to see when you've got a buzz on, but no one here at New Times could verify that from personal experience. Cough, cough.
Blink and you'll miss the Friday night (March 8) screening of Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze, which won the Grand Jury Prize at 1995's Cannes Film Festival. The critically acclaimed movie (Time called it "magnificent") stars Harvey Keitel as a Greek filmmaker returning to his homeland from exile in the U.S. in order to attend a screening of one of his controversial films. But the filmmaker has a larger, more personal agenda. He has heard the legend of the Manakia brothers, Greek siblings who, at the very dawn of the age of cinema, tirelessly crisscrossed the Balkans to document on film the region's history and customs. Keitel's character will not rest until he has learned whether their primitive images really exist; if they do, he is compelled to find them. From Greece to Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and bloody Bosnia-Herzegovina, the filmmaker single-mindedly pursues his obsessive quest in a journey that echoes Ulysses' mythic odyssey.
Ulysses' Gaze was unavailable for preview, so I haven't seen it yet. But the film has garnered some high praise from critics who saw it during Cannes. And it has no regular distributor in the U.S., which means it may never return to Miami for even so much as a one-week theatrical engagement. Both director Angelopoulos (who will be present at the screening to introduce the film and answer questions afterward) and star Keitel are rumored to have agreed never to release the film on video because seeing it on a small screen would diminish the visuals' impact significantly. In other words, see it now or forever hold your peace.
Ulysses' Gaze screens Friday, March 8, at 7:30 at the University of Miami's Cosford Cinema. Call 284-4861 for more info.
