Robert De Niro's performance in TAXI DRIVER remains, after twenty-five years, one of the most powerful ever witnessed in an American film.  It is almost shocking today that he didn't win the Oscar for Best Actor.  The reason isn't hard to locate.  Just as Shirley MacLaine lost in 1960 to Elizabeth Taylor when Academy voters thought the latter might be dying (obviously, she survived), so Robert De Niro lost in 1976 when Peter Finch, who had been nominated for NETWORK, actually died.  I liked Finch in NETWORK, but today his performance seems to pale beside that of De Niro's.  In addition to Henry Fonda's mythic performance as Tom Joad in THE GRAPES OF WRATH, it is almost inconceivable that his performance was not acknowledged at the time.