‘Taxi Driver’ Is 50 Years Old

Taxi Driver’s first destination was a single movie screen on the east side of Manhattan. The harrowing Martin Scorsese drama opened in the Coronet Theatre on February 9, 1976, before gradually expanding across the country. Today it is regarded as one of the greatest films of the 20th century. At the time, however, the divided critical reactions became the journalistic version of a street fight.