Thirty-five years later, Martin Scorsese’s 1976 Taxi Driveris a study in contrasts: new wave grit versus Bernard Herrmann-scored melodramatic ambience, submergent ur-Method acting entwined within Corman-style plot elements, blood-freezing outsider portraiture mated with an ironically heroic denouement. The resulting fugue had an unmistakably apocalyptic ring to it, even in ’76. Scorsese’s infernal visuals were infinitely more articulate about New York than Travis Bickle could ever be, but Robert De Niro’s Bickle (by way of screenwriting novice Paul Schrader) is no stranger to usit may be the movie’s secret triumph that our intimacy with its underground man was achieved between the lines, with silences and dead stares and abrupt seizures of impulsive destruction. (R) MICHAEL ATKINSON
Sat., March 19, 8 p.m.; Tue., March 22, 8 p.m., 2011
