Before Paul Schrader sat down to write the script for 1976’s seminal Taxi Driver, he made sure to reread one novel in particular.

That was Nausea, written by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, an important and groundbreaking entry into 20th-century existentialism. It follows the inner world of a young man as he tries to understand his increasing sense of alienation, the revulsion of existence resulting in a wave of residing constant nausea.

In Taxi Driver, anti-hero Travis Bickle is also inflicted with such nausea, the smell of unsent flowers turning into a putrid reminder of his own isolation. The character’s temperament mirrored that of Schrader, obsessed as he was with the violent black hole of American spectacle and ignorance.

The death of Pier Paolo Pasolini still haunts me so

However, unlike Bickle, Schrader also brought certain strands of introspective European intellectualism. The anti-hero doesn’t understand why he feels the way he does, but the scriptwriter certainly does.

Schrader gave over a deep and thoughtful part of himself into Taxi Driver’s script and – channelled through the moody impressionistic directing from Martin Scorsese – captured a moment of the post-Vietnam War milieu and its personal effects. A moment that trended towards a........

© Herald Scotland