Taxi Driver (Bernard Herrmann)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4aK-YsPeU Note: This is a recording from the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, which does have a few grandiose flourishes. I couldnt find a version of Herrmanns original online without breaking copyright. I only own three Official Soundtracks. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis work on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which has already been covered
here. Angelo Badalamentis music from Twin Peaks included in my colleague
Niall McCallum's great piece on sound in the work of David Lynch. That leaves me with one option. Bernard Herrmanns score for Taxi Driver. Not a bid third option, eh? By the time Martin Scorsese called upon him to score Taxi Driver, Herrmann was already a Hollywood institution. Working with the likes of Orson Welles and, in particular, Alfred Hitchcock, Herrmann had created some of the most enigmatic and instantly identifiable scores in Hollywoods history. It was the last score he would compose before his death. What a way to bow out. The music feels sleazy and somehow degraded. Those sultry saxophones hint at the world of sin that Travis Bickle finds so oppressive. Yet, like Travis, the music is way more ambiguous than that. Just as Travis visits adult cinemas - despite his apparent disgust at the scum of New York - Herrmanns music seems to want to seduce you with its sleaze. Its almost elegant and refined, yet still sneakily depraved. Like a high class call girl. You could imagine it featuring in a shinier Hollywood picture from the 40s, backing up some dame draped over a piano. Yet the intelligence of Herrmanns work rests in the duality of it. The crash/bang histrionics that Hitchcock favoured, which leave the viewer in no doubt of the toughness of Taxi Driver are still in play here, yet are soon melted into that lonely, fatalistic and alluring sax in the opening theme. Listen to the clip above, and to the change at 0:54, and let us know what you think.
Robert Munro