Taxi Driver at 50: How Martin Scorsese turned New York into the coolest scum-ridden hellhole on earth

Movies like ‘The French Connection’, ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and ‘Death Wish’ depicted the Big Apple as a scuzzy metropolis of filth and grime. And despite the reported fury of the New York Mayor’s Office, they helped define the city as we know it to this day, writes Xan Brooks CultureFilmFeaturesInside FilmTaxi Driver at 50: How Martin Scorsese turned New York into the coolest scum-ridden hellhole on earthMovies like ‘The French Connection’, ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and ‘Death Wish’ depicted the Big Apple as a scuzzy metropolis of filth and grime. And despite the reported fury of the New York Mayor’s Office, they helped define the city as we know it to this day, writes Xan BrooksMonday 16 February 2026 01:00 ESTBookmarkCommentsGo to commentsBookmark popoverRemoved from bookmarksClose popoverTaxi Driver original trailerYour support helps us to tell the storyRead moreSupport NowFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Read moreThe road to hell was paved with good intentions for fresh-faced John Lindsay, the incoming mayor of a troubled New York. In 1966, his first year in the job, Lindsay launched a bold new initiative to boost film production. The pioneering Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting offered producers a single one-stop shooting permit, cutting the tangle of bureaucratic red tape and transforming the city into a giant movie set. “For the first time, our parks and museums, streets and courthouses, libraries and monuments are open,” he said. “All the things that make New York unique have been made available to film people.”Lindsay’s big gamble paid immediate dividends. New York-based productions first doubled, then trebled, funnelling much-needed funds to the stricken local economy. In practice, though, the younger filmmakers swerved the monuments and museums and instead beat a path to less salubrious sights. They shot the mean streets and ghettos, the porn theatres and flophouses. They captured the complete urban blight of a metropolis in meltdown. So the Mayor’s Office of Film became a monkey’s paw situation. Lindsay’s wish came true in the worst possible way – drenched in nightmarish neon and magnified on the screen.Lindsay can be glimpsed – albeit thickly fictionalised – in the form of Charles Palantine, the blandly charismatic politician who haunts the wings of Taxi Driver (1976). Martin Scorsese’s noir classic now stands as the apotheosis of this new wave of grubby New York stories; the biggest of the so-called “Bad Apple” genre of films, which flourished in the city for nearly a decade, from John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969) through to Walter Hill’s The Warriors (1979). Without the Mayor’s Office of Film, there would likely have been no The French Connection (1971) or Dog Day Afternoon (1975); no Death Wish (1974), Super Fly (1972), or The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974). These pictures were predominantly low-budget and a little rough around the edges, the cinematic equivalent of a defrocked priest or a disgraced ex-cop. They besmirched New York’s image by casting it as a hazardous crime scene or a hellish underworld. Except that – guess what, go figure – they may have been the making of it, too. “This city is an open sewer,” Travis Bickle tells Palantine as he ferries the man uptown in his cab, and most viewers at the time may well have agreed. New York in the Seventies was a heinous hot mess. The place was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, with its murder rate rocketing, its infrastructure collapsing, and its tax base diminished by decades of white flight. Matters reached a head during the summer heatwave of 1975, when a strike by sanitation workers left 58,000 tons of garbage on the streets and the fire stations were shuttered following a round of mass redundancies. And it was against this backdrop – the spiking temperatures, the mounds of flammable waste – that Scorsese set out to make his film, touring the then-sketchy neighbourhoods of the East Village, Times Square and Lincoln Centre. He kept his sightline low to frame the tatty bodegas and adult bookstores, and to catch the human flotsam that came out at night. Travis can’t sleep and can’t settle, and claims that the city gives him a near-constant headache. It’s full of filth and scum, he tells Palantine. It ought to be flushed down the toilet.RecommendedThis year’s Oscar nominees are furiously political – so why are their stars silent?Meet 96-year-old Frederick