Taxis in film

Taxis in film are much more than a way of getting characters from one scene to the next. A taxi is an enclosed space where two strangers have to share some time, a moving window onto the city and a plot device that lets anyone cross paths with anyone. That is why it appears in dramas such as Taxi Driver, thrillers such as Collateral, comedies such as Night on Earth and even in animation and science fiction.

In this article we do not give you a list of titles (you will find that in our five must-see taxi films), but a look at how and why cinema uses the taxi, and at the scenes that come back again and again.

For a screenwriter, the taxi solves several problems at once:

• It brings strangers together. Anyone can get into a taxi, so it is the perfect excuse for an unlikely encounter: a hitman and an honest driver, a star and an ordinary chauffeur.
• It forces people to talk. Nobody can leave during the journey. It is an ideal place for long dialogues, confessions or awkward silences.
• It shows the city. Streets, lights and neighbourhoods pass by the windows. The taxi lets you film a city without stopping the story.
• It creates intimacy and distance at the same time. The passenger sits in the back and the driver looks at them in the rear-view mirror: close, but apart.

“Follow that car!”

It is probably the line most associated with taxis on screen. The hero leaps into a taxi and asks the driver to chase another vehicle. It works as the start of a chase in crime films and as a gag in comedies. In real life, no taxi driver jumps a red light for it.

The back seat as a confessional

The passenger who tells their life story to a stranger they will never see again is a classic. Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991) takes the idea to the extreme with five conversations in five cities, and any taxi driver will confirm that it happens in real life too: some passengers tell you more on a short journey than others do in years of friendship.

The taxi as a trap

When the passenger or the driver is a threat, the car becomes a cage. Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004) builds all its tension that way: the taxi driver cannot get out because he has a hitman sitting behind him.

The farewell in the rain

A taxi waits while two people decide whether or not to part. The most famous example is the ending of Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards, 1961), with Audrey Hepburn getting out of the taxi in the pouring rain.

If cinema has an official taxi, it is the yellow New York cab. A single shot of a street full of yellow cabs is enough for the audience to know where they are. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) turned it into the symbol of a dangerous city by night, and action films have used it ruthlessly: in Die Hard with a Vengeance (John McTiernan, 1995), Bruce Willis drives one across Central Park. That visual power explains why it is one of the most recognisable taxis in the world.

When reality falls short, cinema invents its own taxis:

• The flying taxi in The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997), with Bruce Willis weaving through the air traffic of a future New York.
• Benny the talking cab in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988), a cartoon taxi with a personality of its own in a film that mixes live action and animation.

The fact that a taxi can fly or talk says a lot about how deeply it is rooted in the collective imagination: everyone knows how it works, so cinema can play with it.

The Madrid taxi, white with a red stripe on the door (we explain its history in the colour of Madrid's taxis), also has its moments of glory. The best remembered is the outlandish taxi in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988), and Carlos Saura simply called Taxi (1996) a drama set in Madrid at night. If you are more interested in the drivers than the cars, in the best films about taxi drivers we look at those and other characters.

Off screen, the Madrid taxi is rather less dramatic and rather more practical. If you are going to the airport from the centre, the journey starting inside the M-30 has a fixed price of €33, as shown on the inside the M-30 fare page. And if you are arriving at Barajas, airport pickup is coordinated with your flight number; if you prefer, you can also order your taxi on WhatsApp.