Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver has a bunch of amazing scenes that are worth analyzing, but one of my favorites is with Scorsese himself. The scene takes place in the main character’s taxi. Scorsese makes a cameo as one of his passengers, and it is obvious that he is deranged very early on in the scene. The music becomes ominous and drawn out as Scorsese’s character makes demands. Most of the dialogue comes from him and it is extremely vulgar as Travis keeps quiet. Besides the underscore, the framing and editing adds to the unease that Travis feels. Their one sided conversation is shown through alternating shots of the characters from different angles. The scene is watched from the three different perspectives: the director’s, the passengers, and Travis’. The director shows us both characters in the frame sitting in the taxi and medium close ups of each character. Through the passenger, we see an over the shoulder shot of Travis, for example, when he fixes his rear view mirror. Travis’ perspective is used to follow his eye line of the building they are parked in front of. The passenger’s dialogue guides Travis’ perspective until he finally lands on the lit window where a woman’s shadow can be seen. The director’s perspective is where we get the most information about the characters. It captures the subtle eye movements from Travis as the rest of his body is stiff. It also captures how ardent the passenger is about the discussion of the murder of his wife. The cuts feel seamless because we want to see both the crazy passenger ranting and Travis’ reactions. Sometimes the passenger’s dialogue will spill over to a shot of Travis’ facial expression, which adds to the smoothness of the conversation. This scene is essential to the overall film because we see Travis really listening, and this is sort of inspiration for his actions that follow.