Taxi Driver
Cannes loves to certify auteurs and stars, and had the chance to do both by handing the Palme d’Or to Martin Scorsese. His study of urban violence featured Robert De Niro as deranged cabbie Travis Bickle, a sort of Ghost of New York Present patrolling the steamy, sewery nighttime streets and giving rides to the city’s human refuse. That year’s jury president, Tennessee Williams, must have responded to a vision of New York as sordid and poetic as those the playwright had created of the modern South.
