TAXI DRIVER
THIS SCENE FROM Taxi Driver (go here) is one of the most referenced scenes in movie history. Danny DeVito actually parodies it in one of his comedies when he looks in the mirror and asks, "Are you talkin' to me?" Director, Martin Scorsese encouraged Robert DeNiro to improvise dialogue in front of the mirror.
The sequence is also notable for the use of disturbing lap dissolves, which seem to go nowhere, expressing the impotence (weakness) of the psychotic character DeNiro plays. (Usually lap dissolves go from one time to another or from one place to another.)
Also noteworthy is the use of audio-visual montage. For as Travis Bickle (DeNiro) keeps repeating the words, "stood up," he is in fact not standing up at all, but is in a fetal (cuddled) position on the bed. This is a good example of how mise-en-scene can stand in powerful counterpoint to what is being said. It's similar to a scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope when the teacher denies any responsibility for the killing his students committed by saying, "A man should stand up for what he believes," but he is sitting down when he makes that statement.
So the film critic or reviewer is always looking for deeper meanings that the elements of cinema express, usually in combination with each other, such as dialogue against mise-en-scene, close-up against underscore, etc. For example, in A Place in the Sun (1951) when we see star Montgomery Clift with one woman we actually hear the theme of the woman he really loves.
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