Isolated ex-marine Travis Bickle applies for a job as a taxi driver, hoping that the night-time work will alleviate the effects of his insomnia. But as he ferries passengers across New York, and embarks on a mission to save a teenager from prostitution, his sense of place and purpose steadily warps.

Scorsese’s New Hollywood classic, a brutal neo-noir, comes from a different New York: dirty, hardscrabble, crime-plagued, longing for relief. Travis Bickle wants to wipe the city clean, but would he be happy with the shiny, money-slick Big Apple of today? The definitive portrait of an American era.