The Train (1964)

It's 65 years since the end of the World War II, and yet as a nation the British are still complacent about the fact, having never actually suffered the indignity of enemy occupation. Across the Channel things were rather different. There haven't been that many English language films about France's torrid 4 years of grudging subservience to their most despised enemy; on television there was the 1970's drama Secret Army (later parodied in the phenomenally successful 'Allo 'Allo.) On French shores Marcel Ophuls' epic documentary The Sorrow and the Pity covered several aspects of the German occupation in fascinating detail, but for me the most potent depiction of the German occupation is undoubtedly John Frankenheimer's The Train.

The setting is occupied Paris, 1944, not long after D-Day, with the city on the verge of being liberated and the German army getting ready to cut and run. The film, based on a true story, was made in the groundbreaking 1960's when Frankenheimer especially was on a roll after a string of marvellously atmospheric black and white thrillers, beginning his association with Burt Lancaster in Birdman of Alcatraz and Seven Days in May, then moving on to The Manchurian Candidate, one of the most terrifying political thrillers ever made.

Frankenheimer boarded The Train late, after Arthur Penn had been fired after one week for making a film that was supposedly dwelling too much on the power of art to compel ordinary people to fight, and Lancaster, fearful that he was making another international flop (after Visconti's The Leopard) brought in Frankenheimer, whose bold style immediately makes itself felt from the moment when German soldiers blunder into the Jeu de Pomme Museum to steal the works of Degas, Cezanne, Brach, etc., for what becomes in effect a railway thriller of cat-and-mouse, between Lancaster's railway controller Labiche and the magnetic, obsessed Colonel Von Waldheim, a riveting performance by Paul Scofield who embodies all the qualities of Arthur Penn's original synopsis.

Though these men know little about art, they're already hooked.

Lancaster and Scofield make for a fascinating clash of athlete versus aesthete, of brawn versus brains, with Burt energetically throwing himself into the action in nearly all his own stunts, including one bravura sequence where jumps onto the art train being driven (by French veteran Michel Simon) through an air raid on the Vaires rail depot, which within minutes is spectacularly blown apart in one of several eye-boggling full-scale action sequences, with the filmmakers given unprecedented access by the SNCF to blow up whole sections of their rail network - which were due for redevelopment anyway.
Another example is at Rive Reine station (as played by Acquigny station) where the French railwaymen engineer the art train to go roaming round in a loop and ram into a previously derailed engine, and then in turn is rammed by another engine from behind. The resulting carnage comes, inevitably, at a high price, to both humans and trains, but the engines are the stars in their self-destructive final blaze of glory.

And all for what? As Lancaster's Labiche explains to sympathetic hotel owner Christine (Jeanne Moreau): "the national heritage, the pride of France. Crazy, isn't it?" The most ingenious, and I suspect, true to life aspect of the film is the effort to which the vigilant French railway workers cover their tracks to deceive the Germans into thinking they are travelling home when they are being detoured instead round Paris.

The final killer blow for Waldheim comes when the nearly exhausted Labiche is left on his own - with most of his railway friends killed - and unscrews a few nuts and bolts from one of the rails, sufficient to derail the art train with no hope of salvage, as the German army is in rapid retreat from the approaching Allies.

The end is as magnanimous and starkly anti-war as anything you'll see, as Labiche shoots the colonel, discards his rifle, and hobbles away leaving the train, all the masterpieces, and several dead heroes lying with them. The film closes with a brilliant last note from Maurice Jarre (who composes a poignant, nostalgic score in honour of his fellow Frenchmen) as the United Artists logo appears.

It is that last note that stays with me most in the memory. That, and the sight of Burt Lancaster climbing down a stepladder from the signal box without using his feet.

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Sequels rarely seem anything more than run-of-the-mill or tame, continuing a successful formula without a tremendous amount of variation. Nigel Kneale however, could hardly be described as a run-of-the-mill writer; his Quatermass TV series had chilled BBC audiences with its documentary-style integrity in relating the most seemingly fantastic events involving aliens from other worlds, but right here on British soil.

It began in 1953 with The Quatermass Experiment, about a rocket that had returned to Earth from outer space with its crew horribly affected by an alien virus; then in Quatermass 2 (a rare instance of a "numbered" sequel long before the fashion for them in the 1970's), the alien invasion had spread to Earth of its own accord with an experimental moon base (filmed at Canvey Island - right) used as the nestling ground for a lifeforce secretly infecting everyone around it.

Come the time of the third series, Kneale felt he had to top himself even further, and did not disappoint, by having the aliens (possibly Martians) not just coming to Earth, but having already been here for millions of years - as Man's intelligent ancestors. The "Exclusive" film studio had adapted the first two series in two economical but gripping 80-minute feature films directed by Val Guest and starring the erstwhile but slightly pedestrian Brian Donlevy in the title role.

Kneale held back on adapting the third series until 1967, by which time the Exclusive studio was now known as Hammer, and had defined itself as the home of lurid, highly successful horror films with a traditionally Gothic edge. There's little doubt that the success of the Quatermass films had helped Hammer to pave the way for its lasting image as the house of horror. Here was a welcome chance to use those same ingredients in a much more cerebral context, as much about ideas as horror, which has always been Nigel Kneale's strength.

Succeeding Val Guest this time was Roy Ward Baker, who brought the same sense of tension and escalating drama that he brought to A Night to Remember - which also featured Scotsman Andrew Keir, who was the ideal cinematic Quatermass.



Every element of Keir's performance hits the right note, right down to little details such as noting the new spelling of Hobbs Lane, after "Hobbs the cricketer" (whilst the old "Hob" was once "a sort of nickname of the devil..."), and despite Keir's own assertion that Roy Ward Baker was a difficult director to work with, what they produced together is still compelling to watch.

Top billing however, is inexplicably not given to him but the splendid James Donald - a familiar stalwart of the silver screen since the 1940's including two classic World War II films, The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Great Escape. Here Donald brings all his British bearing to equally compelling effect as the paleontologist who uncovers prehistoric human skeletons (unearthed at a wonderfully authentic London Tube station) that form the Missing Link - and, Quatermass realises, much, much more.

Assisting them in uncovering the truth is Barbara Shelley as namesake Barbara Judd, playing the stereotypical 1950's girl in the lab, but an intelligent one, who later also experiences the Martian nightmare of ethnic cleansing.

Skeptical Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) delves into the mysterious "unexploded bomb" that has far more secrets behind it than mere military minds can conceive.

At times, the story doesn't quite work visually in trying to convey nightmarish details such as the mental image "video" of the Martian purges, which looks a little cheap, and the climactic special effects image of the devil over London, I confess, to be a little disappointed by when I first saw it. Of all the horror films unnecessarily being remade at the moment, QATP is one of the few that I would like to see redone in terms of special effects.

But the whole thing wraps up memorably with an apocalyptic climax as London becomes a Martian colony, and hypnotised Londoners begin their chilling blood purge for racial purity - an irony of QATP is that it was conceived in the 1950s, the time of race riots in Britain, but come 1967 the same scenes of panic actually pre-dated the student riots in Paris and Europe of a year later. Admittedly if there are any weaknesses, aside from the daunting technical challenges, it's that the depiction of military and ministerial skepticism seems very one-dimensional, although this was very much representative of Britain's dilemma back in the 1950's - whether to move forward into the future or cling to their war-like ideals after World War II.

The last shot, as Keir's Quatermass soberly walks through the shattered streets, echoes Peter Cushing's Van Helsing's sense of weary accomplishment at the end of Dracula. With the assistance of a larger budget (and the helpful use of MGM-Elstree's derelict set for The Dirty Dozen), Hammer produced what I think is one of their best, most thought-provoking works, definitely comparable with their most famous horrors, and one deserving of its status as a British film classic (I saw it at the National Film Theatre in 2000), a film for which all concerned can be proud.

Jaws (1975)

The Secret of the Blockbuster

In essence, it seems to be the pursuit of the seemingly insurmountable, the Big Obstacle. In Star Wars it was the Death Star; Jurassic Park resurrected the dinosaurs; Harry Potter had to overcome Valdemort and The Lord of the Rings had to reach the mountains of Mordor; E.T. had to find his way back to another planet; Titanic had its iceberg. And Jaws had its killer shark.

"You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Back at school in the 1970's stretching through into the early 80's, the big dare amongst boastful schoolboys was "who's scared of Jaws?" Well I jolly well was, prior to first viewing, discreetly hiding at the back of the bedroom in front of a small black-and-white TV set, to minimise the shocks when they came. I well remember Robert Shaw's grisly demise, and it still puzzles me today how the film got by with a PG certificate.

The anticipation of the shark was scary, but on second or third viewing the fun of the shock was much more enjoyable. This was where the film became such a box office bonanza; audiences came back for more, and recommended those who hadn't already. Who was scared enough not to see it?

The promising newcomer Steven Spielberg was a tender 28 when he took on Peter Benchley's bestseller, and it's the film from which his subsequent lucrative career has blossomed. But as well as being the making of him, it was very nearly the end of him too (as indeed, Star Wars was nearly the end of George Lucas.) Like many filmmakers he and the producers suffered the trials on filming on water, with a specially constructed mechanical shark that soon failed to function as soon as the elaborate circuits were ruined by the effect of seawater.

What Spielberg lacked in on-screen hardware, he more than made up for with suspense, allied with an iconic score by John Williams. The famous two-note motif, much imitated, was the epitome of the film but many other lyrical elements of the score underline the atmosphere and the beauty of the setting (filmed in and around Martha's Vineyard.)

In many ways it's Spielberg's best film because the concealment of the monster's actions (as Hitchcock well knew) makes the horror seem all the greater in the audience's imagination. He also garnered helpful performances out of his three leading actors; at first glance all they had to do was react to the deadly fish swimming around them, but Robert Shaw was never the sort of actor who came second to anything, least of all a shark, and the atmosphere improves immeasurably as soon as he looms onto the screen as the Ahab-like Quint. Richard Dreyfuss also provides a good deal of cherubic postgraduate contrast as younger shark fanatic Hooper, and either side of these two the film is anchored unobtrusively by Roy Scheider as Chief Brody, who holds it all together.

Their interaction is especially effective in the chatty but memorable after-dinner scene on board the "Orca", where the shark veterans brag over each other's experiences, brought to a head by Quint's chilling true story (guest written by John Milius) about the sinking of the USS Minneapolis, and how the sharks ate most of the remaining survivors for lunch.

Other watchable supporting players such as Lorraine Gary as Mrs Brody (who flirts mildly with Hooper at the dinner table), the redoubtable Murray Hamilton as the shifty but well-meaning Mayor of Amity Island, and even Peter Benchley himself as a TV news reporter, all have their moments (and most moving of all is Lee Fierro as a grieving parent), but once things leave dry land it's essentially about these three shark hunters and the thrill and terror of the hunt between Man and beast.

The biggest genius of marketing was the poster

Like generations of cinemagoers avoided showers after the terror of Psycho in 1960, so audiences of the 1970's thought twice before swimming in the sea after Jaws. Many blockbusters have been made, before and since, and relied heavily on packaging as much as the film itself, but Spielberg's monsterpiece is a class apart because it is so well made, as the inferior sequels testify.

Last Action Hero (1993)

There are two moments in Last Action Hero that rather endear me towards it. The first is where Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger - as if you didn't know), who has stepped out of the fictional world into the real one, plays Chicken with his adversary's stolen taxi. Unlike in the movies, the two vehicles collide head-on and are left in the street like wrecks. "Damn it, that hurt!", bemoans Slater as he steps away from the bust vehicle.

It's a brave moment in an action blockbuster, a fragment of truth in a genre that thrives on superficial action fantasy. It's also the sort of movie that's in most people's heads every time they leave the cinema wondering how certain scenes - particularly in the action genre - would stretch credibility in real life.

Similarly, every film fan wonders how their hero would cope in the real world, and that's exactly what happens to precocious but plucky little Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), who's seen a few too many Jack Slater movies but nonetheless jumps at the chance to see the latest fourth instalment, a sort of semi-fantasy cop movie blend of Lethal Weapon and Death Wish, at the delightfully nostalgic run-down Pandora cinema in New York (actually the Orpheum Theatre in downtown LA) where seedy but lovable old projectionist Nick (Robert Prosky) has a "magic ticket" (given to him in that very theatre by Harry Houdini!), a ticket "that does what it wants to".
Nick has never used the ticket himself (although he yearned to once - Garbo and Jean Harlow were his idols in those days), but Danny, like his action heroes, is much more reckless. As he sits down to watch the test run of Jack Slater IV, the ticket starts to come alive, as a stick of dynamite flies out of the screen onto the aisle of the theatre, and the terrified Danny runs away towards the screen - and into the film.

Thereafter the boundaries of Last Action Hero (as well as Jack Slater IV) are shifted, to good or bad effect, depending I suspect, on your appreciation of the action genre. Soon Danny is lucky enough to be riding in the back of Jack Slater's car in the middle of a car chase, and is therefore perfectly able to interact with the action, and to impart his own expertly garnered film knowledge ("the bad guys are in there"). But then nasty English hitman Benedict (a splendidly obnoxious Charles Dance) briefly abducts Danny and Slater's daughter (the strident Bridgette Wilson - now Bridgette Wilson-Sampras), and more ominously gets his hands on the mysterious magic ticket, from which he is transported back from the film into the real world. Slater and Danny follow, and suddenly the goalposts are changed again, as Jack realises not only that things are a little tougher in real life, but the villains are out to kill someone called Arnold Schwarzenegger. I enjoy this diversion into reality, but for many audiences it was a turn-off.

The other endearing (and prophetic) moment foe me in LAH is when Slater lands in an adventure park lake (full of tar for whatever reason), and a static dinosaur watches over. Maybe it was an intended dig at the makers of Jurassic Park - but the T-Rex had the last word; the advent of CGI revolutionised cinema in Steven Spielberg's film that same summer, and consigned LAH to a very distant second place at the box office that summer. It's also a pivotal moment in cinema history, when live action gradually gave way to computer effects, so in a sense, it was the Last Action Hero film.

Such a fall from grace seemed most improbable to Arnie and his legion of fans. Here for good measure was not only a staple actioner but also a family-oriented film with an all-star supporting cast, including the likes of veterans Anthony Quinn, Art Carney and F. Murray Abraham ("he killed Mozart!"), and loads of guest appearances (including Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick reprising their most famous screen roles.) I hadn't seen many Schwarzenegger films up to that point (the only one I could remember seeing at the cinema was the comedy Twins), but he has undeniable screen presence, from the first bravura moment when he bestrides the roofs of several police cars - you very much get a sense of "The Man".

Of all the three main action stars of that period (along with Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis), Arnold to me has always been the one most self-deprecating, which made him the ideal choice to play the Last Action Hero. Indeed, the role was written ostensibly with him in mind; he knows he isn't the world's answer to acting, and his nickname of the "Austrian Oak" is well chosen for his square-jawed physicality and thick European accent which suited him so well as the monosyllabic Terminator.

His ally in this case was his previous Predator compatriot Jon McTiernan, also a veteran of the action genre, who has always tried to break beyond the boundaries of just basic wall-to-wall action (from which he made his name), with variable results, such as The Hunt for Red October, Medicine Man, and Last Action Hero.

That it failed so much is not just because of Jurassic Park, but also Columbia's overconfidence riding on the coat-tails of Schwarzenegger, as well as I think, a certain lack of control in the balance between fantasy and reality - a little too fantastic for its own good in Jack Slater IV, and a little uncertain about itself in the real world.

In spite of its cleverness and self-mocking, the story never loses sight of the fact that this is Jack Slater's struggle for survival, including his own identity. When he is involved with a shoot-out with The Ripper (Tom Noonan) at the New York Premiere of Jack Slater IV, his mind flashes back briefly to the previous shoot-out when his son was also killed.

The nightmare of the rooftop confrontation of Jack Slater III is reprised, only this time Danny is the hostage. The manner in which he dispatches the Ripper is still a little improbable for the "real" world - but worse is to come for Slater when Benedict re-emerges, having realised that bad guys can (and often do) win, and shoots Slater in the chest.

A curious observer observes the ambulance skidding by along the New York streets - for the magic ticket has acquired another cinematic icon - Death from The Seventh Seal, played not by Bengt Ekerot, but by Sir Ian McKellen (villains with vicious knives seem to be a pre-occupation in this film, first The Ripper, and now Death itself with his scythe.) But He's only come along to watch this particular casualty out of curiosity - Slater's not scheduled to die, because he's a fictional character, and will only disappear from existence when the grosses go down. It's another curiosity in a curious action film - that has no particular big finish, other than to return its man of the movies into the fictional world where he belongs.
Of course, it tried to have its cake and eat it - as Hollywood always does - by trying to sentimentalise whilst at the same time satisfying the genre's lust for action and macho one-liners. This was possibly the other reason for its critical and commercial failure, for trying to be too clever.

Two Schwarzeneggers for the price of one: the "real" one's on the right.

Arnold himself was the most philosophical (and secretly the most wounded) by the film's failure. As he himself said, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." I still think it's an enjoyable film, that suffered a rough ride from critics and audiences who were expecting something a little less existential than what they got. I particularly like its enthusiasm for Big Screen Cinema, and how the scenario throws up so teasingly the possibilities of bringing so many movie characters into the real world: imagine Darth Vader escaping from his cinematic intergalactic confines to strike back for the Empire in this galaxy as well as his own; or Hannibal Lector having even more fun in the real world than he ever had in his own lurid movies.

Who knows, had Last Action Hero it been the success he was hoping, Mr. Schwarzenegger would still be a full-time movie star now and not the Governor of California.

A Night to Remember (1958)

98 years ago today, the illustrious RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage, sailed dangerously through heavy ice in the North Atlantic on her way to New york. Such was the ship's titanic size (to use the pun), the amount of water that it took for the "unsinkable" ship to overspill beyond its water-tight compartments (that were only as high as the first 5 decks) meant that it was a whole hour and a half - until approximately 1am on April 15th - before the ship sank.

I mention these relatively obvious details that history has made them because the story of the Titanic has long since become folklore. Of the many melodramatic film versions that have been made of this famous tragedy, only A Night to Remember has been specifically concerned with covering the reported facts of the disaster in documentary-like fashion, making it still the best and most authentic Titanic film ever made.

Author Walter Lord garnered together all the known or most commonly recorded memories by witnesses (such as the notion that musicians were still playing when the ship was sinking), for his informative and compelling factual novel. In its unpretentious and unmelodramatic way (as well as the audacity not to require the name Titanic in the title), the company which was the first to option the film rights was therefore the relatively humble British Rank studio, but with the sort of facilities at Pinewood to be able to pull off a decent film adaptation of the tragedy.

The Titanic musicians' memorial at Southampton.

Producer William MacQuitty had an emotional attachment to the ship himself having seen the Titanic launched from Belfast docks, and was therefore able to convince John Davis, the head of Rank (then largely noted for Doctor comedies and other lightweight fare) to undergo the challenge of staging the sinking with a combination of the Pinewood tank, the Ruislip Lido, and the interiors for the well designed sets (by Alex Vetchinsky).


For such an ambitious but relatively restrained production, good reliable character actors were called upon rather than stars - with the exception of Kenneth More, then Rank's leading contract player, who receives top billing as Lieutenant Lightoller. Other familiar faces of the years to come are to be seen such as a young David McCallum (as one of the two valiant wireless operators), and future Bond/Avengers girl Honor Blackman, and even Bond himself, Sean Connery, is apparently among the many extras assembled on the boat decks. The real star of the show however is the ship.

In the days before the all-star disaster movie, many of these actors played their small but telling little cameo parts - like all good British character actors do - staying in spirit to the style of Walter Lord's book in brilliantly accessible fashion by screenwriter Eric Ambler, and directed with an excellent eye for the escalating tension by Roy (Ward) Baker. Also covered in subtle fashion was the endemic class distinction that led to most of the First Class passengers being rescued, whereas 1,500 of the Second Class and steerage (Third) class and crew perished - plus those few who chose the dignity of death before dishonour for the sake of their wives and children.

In any Titanic story, the most moving scenes are those of the loved ones unwilling to part from each other: most well known is the case of Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus, who had lived together for over 40 years, and therefore Mrs Straus was adamant that wherever her husband would go, she would go too.

It's worth pointing out that in terms of attitudes the world was a very different place in 1912. The First World War was two years later, where such notions of chivalry and the dignity of an entire generation were destroyed on the battlefield (and memorials were listed alphabetically instead of the Titanic memorials' order of officers and First Class passengers first), so it seems a little improbable nowadays to think of people gladly forsaking their lives for others in such a way that those on board the great liner did.

In its way, just as the September 11th terrorist attacks changed the way we view the world, so too did the Titanic disaster, before the rest of the 20th century unleashed its devastation on the planet.

The story of the Titanic has created many myths and retellings (especially James Cameron's 1996 blockbuster), but for the original story, or the best that can be approached to it, watch A Night to Remember.

Titanic memorial plaque at Southampton dock

The Red Balloon (1955), plus other shorts

This is a gem of a film, only three reels (30 minutes) long, but too brilliant to deny being included on this 100 list.

I'll admit it, I often cry when I watch movies: often it's not too difficult if the film is doing its job, and the intensity of feeling and focus on the emotions in the cinema is so much more suited than anywhere else.

A small boy (the director's 12-year old son) is given a red balloon for a companion, and it soon becomes a character in its own right, every bit as young, cheeky and innocent as the boy himself. He takes it around with him whenever he can, on the grimy atmospheric streets of Paris, to his delight but to the annoyance of his parents and crusty schoolteacher, and the vengeful jealousy of other boys (the scene where the balloon is punctured and gradually deflates, is unbearably sad.)

But then there is the finale that always has me tearful, where all the other balloons in Paris - of whatever colour - fly up into the sky and descend on the little boy and carry him heavenwards, accompanied by a sentimental but memorable score by Maurice le Roux. Technically this is quite an accomplishment, although you can probably see the wires dangling above the balloons from time to time, not that this really matters. It's not too difficult to see where Spielberg got some of his artistic inspiration for films such as E.T. and Schindler's List (the little girl in red) from.

The Red Balloon (or Le Balon Rouge if you want to be French) is, to put it simply, a masterpiece - and I use that term very rarely.

Other Shorts

While we're covering the subject of classic short films, I'll take the opportunity to shoehorn one or two more favourites into this blog. (In the case of Laurel & Hardy, see Way Out West.) I have to mention what is for me The Red Balloon's partner piece, THE SNOWMAN (1982), also a film about childhood innocence with a heartbreaking ending. It's hard to look at the film objectively nowadays as it's become such a cultural phenomenon since then, and strictly speaking it was made for television (a regular on Channel 4 every Christmas), but Diane Jackson's animation of Raymond Brigg's illustrated children's book does have a special cinematic magic about it.

I remembered seeing a film on television decades ago,
and later discovered it was called COSMIC ZOOM (1968), about a boy and a dog in a boat (again, the simplicity of childhood theme) at which point the camera zooms out - out of the lake in Montreal where the boat is travelling, out to the edge of the Earth, then beyond the Sun, to the outer reaches of the galaxy, to the furthest known point in outer space - and then it zooms in - back to the Earth, to the lake, the boy, and then further in towards the blood cells of a small mosquito bite on his arm, to its infinite micro organisms (DNA was not developed back in 1968) right down to the atom.

Probably the most startling and avant garde of all short films ever made is UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1938), conceived by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali as a deliberately abstract piece of work which is nonetheless nightmarishly bizarre in its concept and execution, and most of all, the images are striking. Any cinematic history lesson would be incomplete without a viewing of it.

Nor indeed, is the first ever cinema film ever made, known under no particular title other than LEAVING THE LUMIERE FACTORY (1895) (La Sortie des Usines Lumiere), a simple but historical piece of film where the employees at the factory run by the Lumiere brothers (who considered moving pictures just a novelty) stand outside the factory door at closing time. It was the first of a programme of 1-minute unedited moving picture sensations at the Grand Cafe of the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, in December 1895 - the birth of cinema.

If you notice a French theme running through most of these short films, well, they were practically the inventors of cinema after all (Edison and a few others notwithstanding), and I'll claim a little birthday connection with cinema history here: it was on 19th March 1895, that those employees were filmed leaving the Paris factory.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Of all the brilliant films made by Martin Scorsese, this one to me is his most potent and haunting in its effect. The setting is 1970's New York, but in truth it could be anywhere, as it really concerns one man's isolation into his own personal hell, created (in part) by the society around him.

At its centre is a definitively intense performance by Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle; in essence an ordinary man (as the poster suggests) but with that explosive element hidden underneath - even in his gentle moments you sense an uneasiness. The idea for the film was borne out of the mind - one might say the soul - of writer Paul Schrader, after a particularly desolate spell of isolation, out of which came this searing screenplay with an uncomfortably real feel to it.

Scorsese's terrifying moodpiece is made that way by colourfully seedy photography by Michael Chapman and a brooding, menacing and typically eccentric score by the late Bernard Herrmann, whose last great contribution to cinema this was (passing away in 1975 before the film's release.) His score conveys not only the menace of the city streets, but also a nostalgia for that transitional era of 1960s/70s New York, with a lovely lingering jazz nighttime theme, ostensibly for the character of Betsy (as played by Cybill Shepherd), whom Travis adores from afar.

Like most elements of the city however, Bickle is set apart from her, as detached from the city and yet as much a part of it in the taxi he drives every night, with the various ill-assorted customers who sit in his back seat - including an aspiring politician (Leonard Harris), a homosexual pimp (a creepily hip performance by Harvey Keitel) and his 12-year old child prostitute Iris (the excellent Jodie Foster), whom Bickle takes on as a personal crusade as his state of mind becomes ever more intense and troubled. This provocative sub-plot hit a chord sufficiently for one young man, John Hinckley, to unsuccessfully assassinate President Ronald Reagan, out of his devotion to Jodie Foster in 1981.

Why Hinckley did this, or what motivates Bickle to want to kill his hero Charles Palantine never seems clear (there are also certain parallels with Bobby Kennedy's assassin); maybe it is just a general reflection of both men's frustrated desire to do something to change society.

Certainly Bickle's motives are more clearly felt when he unleashes his arsenal on the pimp's apartment where Iris is detained. Appropriately, it is Martin Scorsese himself who gives Travis the idea of using guns to solve his problems, in a scene-stealing cameo that's much more than just a Hitchcock-style director's appearance. That, and a later incident in a store where Travis just happens to be wandering in and shoots a burglar, and though he is shooed out of the shop before the police arrive, in his eyes the deed is a gesture of vigilante heroism to help clear up the streets.

The resulting bloodbath that comes at the film's climax, I remember well when I saw it in the autumn of 1989 at the sadly missed Ipswich Film Theatre; Scorsese had become a speciality there, ever since its gala opening with Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More in 1973. The film studies lecturer who introduced the film warned audiences how its violent conclusion might have a disturbing effect, and how it haunted me for some hours afterwards. Even by today's standards, when we are relatively attuned to violent images, this finale still packs a punch.

Bizarrely however, the story takes an unexpected turn when Bickle is cherished as a folk hero after his bloody rampage - with the unseen voice of Iris's father thanking Bickle for his actions. Continuity lets down the side a little here, as Bickle is seen back with the same long haircut he had from earlier in the film, and still doing his taxi round - almost as though nothing had happened. One of his passengers is Betsy, who has similarly warmed to him like the rest of the community, but Travis is wise to her aloofness now - or maybe just too far gone himself to engage in any normal relationship. The ending is unusually mellow for such a horrific climax preceding it, although it does offer a brief hint of the simmering violence underneath, as Travis adjusts his rear view mirror and a Walter Murch "backwards" sound effect conveys the state of the taxi driver's mind as he continues on his way.

A brilliant film, but one to be watched in the right frame of mind, for it preys upon loneliness and isolation and how they can bring one to the brink of despair, or in this case, violence.