As plumes of steam rise and dissipate from the grates of New York in the opening frames of Taxi Driver, we see the unsettled brown eyes of Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro in a career-defining role.

The second of Martin Scorsese’s successful collaborations with De Niro, the pair went on to make another eight feature films. Scorsese was a new breed of director, pushing the boundaries of “New Hollywood” – an era that broke the rules of the studio system to produce something rawer, darker and willing to explore the underbelly of the American dream. This kind of filmmaking was more in tune with the depressed 1970s than the upbeat films of an earlier decade.

For several years now, as part of my America on Film module, I have been teaching Taxi Driver, released in the UK 50 years ago in 1976. The course aims to show how film represents American history. Taxi Driver is an excellent example, and one that students continue to respond to in interesting ways.

This was the year of the presidential election, pitting the replacement for the disgraced Richard Nixon, Republican Gerald Ford, against the Democratic peanut farmer from Georgia, Jimmy Carter.

The Vietnam war was still reverberating and the US was demoralised and disillusioned by the My Lai massacre, the revelation of the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate break-in and cover-up, and the subsequent resignation of Nixon. Paranoia was high. The enemy was no longer just external – this was a period of thawing of relations in the cold war........

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