Raging Bull

Whoever is dissatisfied by Raging Bull, I'm sure they watched it with expectations of watching a sports movie, like Rocky. Despite the AFI chose Raging Bull as the #1 sports movie of all time, you can't expect to see the most breathtaking boxing match nor to witness the best crochet of boxing history. Raging Bull can only be classified as a drama/biography. Director Scorsese chose to go with black&white cinematography only to keep the young viewers away from this masterpiece of art. It's not fair to compare Rocky with Raging Bull. Rocky was a populist movie mostly for young viewers, and Raging Bull is a cinematic masterpiece. From a wide point of view, for instance, if you look at one of the Michelangelo's paintings; at first you see a nude woman, if you look longer and deeper you realize that her nudity expresses some thought, if you look continuously and give a life to it in your imagination you discover that the women are not just their bodies. Accordingly, like it is not enough looking once to a painting to understand what opinion does it defend; it is not reasonable and not fair to watch Raging Bull so as to see a sports movie. Also it is not reasonable to see Raging Bull only once. Raging Bull is one movie that, every time you watch it you get a better taste, every time you watch it you discover something new.

Raging Bull taught us that even if you are the best at some skill, even if you are the best of all; you need to create witnesses, admirers and supporters of your skill. It's the only way to reach the top. Moreover, it is harder to stay at the top than to reach the top. Not because someone better than you can defeat you, it's just because of the need to be accepted on every authority; like the Council of Judges, the Media and the Admiration of People. Director Scorsese draws benefit from the hypocrisy of fame. He empowers Raging Bull to make people ask to their conscience if the popular values that people choose can really cherish their values.

In Raging Bull, Jake La Motta was the best boxer of all, but people didn't like him. He was disrespectful, he was uncivilized, he was very ugly, he was arrogant, he was irritable and he didn't care; 'cause he believed himself. Despite the fact that he is the best, everybody disliked him. Soon, he was left alone; and in a very short time he lost everything he possessed. When he opened his eyes back to life, he found himself in prison. The scene that he is punching and butting the wall facing him is one of the most heart rending memorable scenes of the whole cinema history.

At the end, he finally throws in the towel of believing himself, he loses his faith and becomes to learn what he never wanted to learn: The Fame. He starts running his own business at a night club under his name, working as a stand-up comedian at the stage. People laugh at him for the jokes he made out of his memories, the jokes paraphrasing the bitter facts of life; including the very famous joke of the British King Richard-III which he said in the year 1485 just before dying: "A horse, a horse... My kingdom for a horse!". There we understand truly: For every joke there lies a share of a fact underneath.

There's very little to like about the character portrayed here by Robert De Niro, other than to acknowledge that he took advantage of one of the few things he was good at i.e. thumping anyone who enraged him regardless of whether they were in the boxing ring or not.

The power of the movie comes from De Niro under the direction of Martin Scorsese, providing a wholly convincing performance of the furious, bitter, bovine pugilist with serious psychological issues. It is one of the truly great performances of that decade, perhaps of all time, nailing the establishment of a character it's genuinely difficult to have any empathy or sympathy with. If you dig deeper, you will not be surprised to find a serial misogynist who married seven times and who beat all of his wives. If this is your type of hero you might like to reconsider how you got there. If De Nero, Scorsese and cinema are your heroes, not too many will disagree with that.

"Raging Bull" isn't the average, stereotypical underdog boxing movie, because it isn't really about boxing at all. Like most great movies, its focus is much deeper. It came out in 1980, earned Robert De Niro a Best Actor Academy Award, and was marked down as another solid triumph by director Martin Scorsese, whose previous 1976 outing with De Niro earned them both critical acclaim (and for De Niro, an Oscar nomination, although he would actually earn an Oscar for "Raging Bull" four years later).

It dwindled in production hell for quite some time, with Scorsese's drug use halting production and only the duo's strong willpower that kept the project moving ahead. It was after De Niro read boxer Jake LaMotta's memoirs that he knew he wanted to make the film, so Scorsese and De Niro turned to Paul Schrader for a script. Schrader, who had previously written "Taxi Driver" (1976), agreed, and wrote the screenplay for them. The rest is history.

"Raging Bull" has often been regarded as the greatest film of the 80s. To be honest, I'm not so sure about that, since various genres offer different feelings and emotions (comparing this to a comedy might seem rather silly). But to say it is one of the most powerful films of all time would be no gross overstatement -- it is superb film-making at its finest.

De Niro gained 60 pounds to play LaMotta, which was an all-time record at the time (later beaten by Vincent D'Onofrio, who gained 70 pounds for Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket"). His physical transformation is on-par with any great screen makeover, especially the most recent, ranging from Willem Dafoe in "Shadow of the Vampire" to Charlize Theron in "Monster." In addition, co-star Joe Pesci also lost weight for his role of Joey, LaMotta's short, eccentric brother. The greatest scene in the film is when LaMotta accuses his brother of having an affair with his wife. The tension is raw, the dialogue amazing, and the overall intensity electrifying.

The film is most often compared to "Rocky," more than any other, apparently because they both concern a certain level of boxing. As much as I absolutely adore "Rocky," "Raging Bull" is a deeper, more realistic film. But whereas "Raging Bull" is raw, "Rocky" is inspiring, and that is one of the reasons I do not think these two very different motion pictures deserve comparison, for the simple fact that they are entirely separate from one another. The only connecting thread is the apparently central theme of boxing, which is used as a theme in "Rocky," and a backdrop in "Raging Bull." They're entirely different motion pictures -- one uplifting, the other somewhat depressing -- and the people who try to decide which is better need to seriously re-evaluate their reasons for doing so. They both succeed splendidly well at what they are trying to do, and that's all I have to say about their so-called connection.

De Niro, who could justifiably be called the greatest actor of all time, is at the top of his game here. In "Taxi Driver" he displayed a top-notch performance. He wasn't just playing Travis Bickle -- he was Travis Bickle. And here he is Jake LaMotta, the infamous boxer known for his abusive life style and somewhat paranoid delusions during his reign as world middleweight boxing champion, 1949 - 1951. Throughout the film, he beats his wife (played expertly and convincingly by the 19-year-old Cathy Moriarty), convinced that she is cheating on him, and that is more or less what the film is truly about. The boxing is just what he does for a living, and could be considered as a way to release some of his deeper, harbored anger.

LaMotta has a close relationship with Joey, his brother, and their interaction is often what elevates the film above others of its genre. The dialogue is great, close to the perfection of Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," rich in that rapid-fire filthy language and brutal insults. Pesci, who was on the verge of quitting showbiz at the time of pre-production, was spotted by De Niro in a cheap B-movie named "The Death Collector" (1975), a.k.a. "Family Business," a truly horrid film that nevertheless showcased an early sign of things to come for Pesci. De Niro wanted him for the movie and his premonition was either very lucky or very wise -- this is one of the best performances of Pesci's entire career.

Scorsese shot the film in muted black and white, portraying a certain era of depression and misery. To make the blood show up on screen during the occasional fight scenes, Scorsese used Hershey's Syrup -- which is an interesting tidbit of trivia for any aspiring film-making planning on filming a violent movie in black and white. But how often does that happen?

This is certainly one of the most intense films Scorsese has directed, and one of the most important of his career. Along with "Taxi Driver," it is an iconic motion picture that will stand the test of time for years and years to come.

Scorsese and De Niro's partnership over the years has resulted in some of the most influential and utterly amazing motion pictures of all time: "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "The King of Comedy," "Goodfellas" and "Casino" come to mind almost instantly. But perhaps the one single title that will be remembered as their most daring effort is "Raging Bull," a motion picture so utterly exhilarating that it defies description. It is simply a masterpiece for the mind and senses, leaving you knocked out cold after its brutal one-two punch. If I had to assemble a list of required viewing, this would be up there towards the top.

Robert Deniro as Jake La Motta in Raging bull is a boxer who's violence in the ring spills out into his home life. This not a boxing movie per se but a character study of a near pshcotic pugilist. THis guy is just overflowing with testosterone and has a severly unbalanced mental state. Any thing that gets in his way he promptly smashes. Raging bull is a study of male rage which knows no bounds. Jake La Motta has a massive inferiority complex which drives him to the heights of brutality. IN the ring, Jake is the pride of his neighborhood. Outside the ring however he hurts his family and friends. He wants to maintain control over his wife and does so through bullying and phsical abuse. He realizes she is the better person and feels she must be having an affair whenever he is away. His performance in the ring takes away from his sex life with her. HE cannot lose control of the things he feels he has a right to. In the end who loses everything; his wife his brother's support, and his status as a boxer. WIth age his violent passions subdued in part by his great weight he becomes a mere shadow of his former self. In closing this is a brilliant picture that should have swept the 1980 academy awards. One of my alltime top ten.

The routine use of black-and-white film to make movies seems to have ended in the mid-sixties, probably killed off by the advent of colour television. Since then black-and-white has been used very sparingly; even Polanski's `Chinatown', obviously conceived as homage to the films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s, was shot in colour.

`Raging Bull'- a biography of the boxer Jake La Motta who for a time held the world middleweight championship- is one of the few exceptions. The use of black-and-white seems to have been inspired by the fact that the film depicts real-life events that occurred in the forties and fifties. Scorsese has tried to capture the look of both the films and the newsreels of that period. This is remarkably effective for the boxing scenes, which have a raw, brutal power and graphically depict the aggressive nature of the sport. The other remarkable thing about the film is the performance of Robert de Niro, for which he won a well-deserved Best Actor Academy Award. De Niro actually learned to box for the film, and did all the boxing scenes himself without using a stunt double, but his portrayal of La Motta's private life is equally effective.

Some boxers- Henry Cooper comes to mind- are hard-hitting inside the ring but gentlemanly and restrained outside. La Motta, as portrayed in this film, did not fall into this category. De Niro portrays him as a man with a very short fuse, seething with anger and violence. Unlike his great rival Sugar Ray Robinson, an elegant practitioner of the art of boxing, La Motta tries to overpower his rivals with brute force rather than relying on skill. His aggression is not something confined to the ring, but rather an inherent part of his personality, and comes out in his dealings with others. He treats his beautiful wife Vicki particularly badly, frequently (and irrationally) suspecting her of infidelity and subjecting her to both verbal and physical abuse. Besides De Niro's dominating performance, there are also very good contributions from Cathy Moriarty as Vicki and from Joe Pesci as La Motta's loyal brother Joey, another frequent target of abuse despite his loyalty.

For me, this is a very good film, yet one that falls just short of the classic status that some have claimed for it. At times it is enthralling to watch, but at others, particularly in the first half, it seems to lack structure, as La Motta takes on a series of opponents without the significance of these fights ever becoming clear. More could have been made of the gambling-inspired corruption that infested the sport at this period and which may well have contributed to La Motta's sense of frustration- at one time it is made clear to him that his getting a chance to fight for the world title depends upon his taking a dive in a non-title fight. The main weakness, however, is a sense of emptiness at its centre, resulting from the lack of a character who can engage our sympathies. As I said, it is De Niro's performance that dominates the film, but for all his fine acting, even he cannot make us sympathise with a drunken, self-pitying, paranoid, violent wife-beater. As a character study of an unpleasant character it is excellent, but it can go no further than that. I cannot agree that this is the greatest film of the eighties; indeed, for me it was not even the greatest sporting film of the eighties. (I preferred both `Chariots of Fire' and `Eight Men Out'). It is an easy film to admire, but a difficult one to love. 7/10.