by Mike Norton
How does one begin to write about their favorite movie of all time? A better question might be why would anyone want to write about their favorite movie? Sam has basically given me free reign to write about whatever film I want and I do have some more films lined up that I could write about, but I can’t resist writing about Raging Bull, my favorite movie of all time, even if articulating just what I love about it would ruin my personal connection to it. Everyone has one a “favorite” movie, whether they admit it or not (at the very least, they have a handful of movies vying for the number one spot), and we’d be remiss if we denied the personal connection we have to our favorite films. For me, Raging Bull isn’t just another movie, as cliché as that sounds. Over the past two years since I first saw it, I’ve seen it nine times, and it continues to impact me and shape my life in ways that few other works of art have. Trying to judge it on an aesthetic level could obscure my personal connection to it, and vice versa; in this essay I will attempt to balance the two. Here goes nothing.
Raging Bull is about the life of Jake LaMotta, a famous boxer from the 1940s whose memoir of the same name became the basis for this film. Martin Scorsese directs, and Robert De Niro stars as LaMotta, famously gaining weight to portray LaMotta later in his life. It is in black and white, for practical reasons mostly, since the amount of blood would be, apparently, far too much to portray in color, but it also gives the film a raw, rugged feel. Joe Pesci plays Jake’s brother and manager, Joey, and Cathy Moriarty plays Jake’s second wife, Vickie. This was the first major acting role for both actors.
Now, Scorsese was known up to this point in his career for gritty, stylish character studies infused with Catholic guilt and environmental violence that reflect the director’s own upbringing in Little Italy, New York. Scorsese has portrayed petty criminals in existential crises in Mean Streets, and one man’s delirious spiral into violent insanity in Taxi Driver. Jake LaMotta is the perfect subject for a Scorsese character study. He’s violent, petty, terribly insecure and cripplingly paranoid. He takes brutal poundings in the ring, and is viciously controlling of his wife outside the ring. Essentially, he loves control, and constantly feels the need to assert his control- in one of the most intense and operatic beatdowns in the film, LaMotta, bloodied and beaten to the point of near collapse, approaches his opponent after the fight has ended, and utters these words, “You never got me down, Ray”. Indeed, it wasn’t Sugar Ray Robison who “got LaMotta down”, but it would be LaMotta himself, as this is the last fight shown in the film due to LaMotta’s ballooning weight and move to Florida where he opens his own night club.
LaMotta’s self propelled downward spiral is the result of him not being able to enjoy the good things he has in life. For starters, there’s Vickie, the seductive neighborhood blonde that LaMotta marries after breaking up with his first wife early on in the film. He’s so controlling of Vickie that one starts to wonder why the hell she went for this guy in the first place. The only happiness between the two in the film comes via the color home video footage of LaMotta and Vickie’s marriage. When LaMotta starts putting on weight and accuses the local mafia boss Salvy () of sleeping with Vickie, Joey has sound advice for his brother- “Do a little more fucking and a little less eating.” Then, there’s his title belt, which he worked so hard to achieve against seemingly impossible odds. Its right after he wins it that he begins to put on weight again. And later in the film when he needs money for bail he literally takes a hammer to his belt for the jewels, even though the belt would be more valuable as a whole, not for its parts.
One of the biggest complaints of the film is that Jake is so unlikable that, therefore, the movie is unlikable. Scorsese, along with screenwriters Mardik Martin and Paul Schrader, refuse to show any sympathy towards Jake or even divulge details about his upbringing that would make his actions understandable. He doesn’t even get any voice over commentary, which was one of the major components of aligning the audience with the delusional Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. But the Bible quote used at the end of the film suggests redemption for LaMotta. Despite his self destruction and loneliness, the spiritually wounded LaMotta is still human, and those in the audience who are predisposed to dislike the film based solely on his personality are being no better than the man himself by judging him.
Robert De Niro embodies the role completely, not only from the impressive boxing skills he shows off in the ring or his weight gain later in the film, but from the small, honest mannerisms and naturally edgy persona that he carries with him throughout the film. When he’s surrounded by the neighborhood crime bosses at a night club table, he goes into a defensive mode, clearly disliking the men but not ready to full-on flip out like he would against his brother or wife when they are alone. In fact whenever LaMotta is surrounded by people in the film, De Niro keeps his character’s intensity right around the surface, perhaps saving the energy for the next time he’s in the ring. It’s terrific acting, always true to character and always compelling. Pesci and Moriarty are terrific as well, as the push-pull dynamic between De Niro and either one of these actors always feels natural, creating such vivid drama that could only be captured by top tier actors pouring their all into their roles.
All of Scorcese’s visual touches are on display in Raging Bull, from the slow motion panning that suggests either intense longing or loathing as LaMotta surveys his environment (admittedly, it’s more of the former, with several shots of Salvy and his crew from Jake’s point of view suggesting this, but that initial shot of Vickie’s legs as she dips them in the pool adds a bit of the latter to the mix) to the virtuoso tracking shots and naturalistic framing of intimate dialogue scenes. Scorcese’s style really gets a chance to stretch its legs in the boxing matches. Always cited as some of the best on screen fighting in cinema history, they are truly kinetic, a visceral explosion of pent up emotion that captures the intense rhythm of two bodies in motion attempting to beat the hell out of each other. They are realistic in the same way a shootout from The Wild Bunch is realistic- in that film, there’s plenty of blood and anti heroic actions, but whenever someone shoots, they usually hit a target, whether it be an enemy or an innocent by stander. In Raging Bull, whenever someone throws a punch, its impact is felt, and the all-systems-go energy of an actual boxing match stretched over 12 rounds is compacted into 2-3 minutes of ruthless combating. If anything else, Raging Bull deserves a spot amongst the classics for these scenes alone, a triumph of cinematography, editing, and physical acting.
It’s also in these boxing scenes that LaMotta thrives. He pours his insecurities and past failures into the ring, and this restless energy is, regardless of LaMotta as a person, quite inspiring. When he rehearses his lines as a comedian in the first scene of the film, now much later in his life and much heavier, one could tell he still wishes for a stage where he can truly rage, not just to recite mediocre stand up comedy to drunk hecklers. The first time we see him after his weight gain in the third act of the film, he is sitting poolside with his family talking to a reporter, telling him how he was so sick of worrying about his weight when he was a boxer, and that’s why he retired. Clearly, his life is pointless without boxing. This has always been a source of inspiration for me, since my life without exercise would be… well, let’s just say that on some days, a gym trip is all that separates me from pounding my fists against the wall in a fit of blind rage. It’s where the body takes on a mind of its own, and thought process goes out the window.
Another thrilling aspect of Raging Bull is its blunt realism. Unlike in Taxi Driver, where Travis Bickle’s actions in one scene directly influence his actions in the next, and he has a traceable (if somewhat ambiguous) character arc, Jake LaMotta is let loose on the world in Raging Bull without consequence, with his life being loosely connected from one scene to another via Martin and Schrader’s brilliantly structured screenplay. Violence, jealousy, and guilt are constant forces in the film, occasionally appearing out of nowhere without warning. I really can’t think of a single scene where I’m not completely absorbed in the lives of these characters. From the opening frame of De Niro shadowboxing in the ring in slow motion to the haunting Intermezzo, to the final one of a just out of frame De Niro shadowboxing in his dressing room before he goes on stage to recite comedy, I’m hooked. I don’t know if it will always be my favorite film, and I don’t think I would call it the best film of all time, but for me there’s no other movie like it.
