Raging Bull

On the ESPN panel discussion show, Around the Horn, the writers were discussing their favorite sports movies. For boxing, some chose Rocky, some chose Raging Bull. The interesting thing about that is that Raging Bull is not really a boxing movie. It's a movie that features boxing, but director Martin Scorsese has clearly indicated that it's not a movie about boxing.

Released in 1980, Scorsese was reluctant to make the film. Robert De Niro had read Jake LaMotta's autobiography and urged his friend to make it, but Scorsese hated all sports, especially boxing. He finally decided to make it because he saw something of himself in LaMotta. He had just come through a period of drug addiction and realized that boxing was an allegory for filmmaking--every new film is stepping into the ring and bleeding.

LaMotta, who coincidentally just passed away, was a middleweight fighter from the Bronx who was briefly champion. He was known for his rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson, and being a savage pugilist, moving forward, taking punches, and coming back in late rounds of fights in which he was losing. He was also known for his rage (hence the title) and his sad decline, in which he served a stint in jail for procuring and performed a nightclub act of reciting monologues. His life had an operatic arc, catnip for someone like Scorsese.

Raging Bull opened to mixed reviews, but has come to be acclaimed as one of the great American films at all times. Almost every critic, in retrospect, named it the best film of the '80s (even though it did not win Best Picture; it lost to Ordinary People) and along with Goodfellas is seen as Scorsese's masterpiece. We know we're in for a different kind of boxing film when the opening credits are set to Cavalleria Rusticana, with De Niro shadowboxing in slow motion, the black and white film diffuse and smoky. The film shows us his turbulent home life, with his long-suffering brother (Joe Pesci, a great performance) and his marriage to a woman he meets when she is fifteen (Cathy Moriarty).

These kitchen-sink scenes are brutal, perhaps even more brutal than the fight scenes, which punctuate the action. Scorsese and his cinematographer, Michael Chapman, are in the ring, close up, with blood and sweat flying. One of the most enduring shots is post-fight, with a closeup of one of the ropes, dripping with blood.

These scenes show how savage the sport is, but it's LaMotta's life that is a constant bit of savagery. He is a brute, frequently prone to fits of jealousy. When Moriarty mentions that his upcoming opponent is good looking, it sticks in his craw. Pesci will see Moriarty out for drinks with a local hood (Frank Vincent, who also passed away recently) and beat Vincent to a pulp. But he keeps the incident secret from De Niro, who then suspects that Pesci has been sleeping with her. He ends up beating up Pesci in front of his own children, which ends their relationship.

Technically, this film is brilliant. Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's long-time editor, is at her best here, not only with the boxing footage, but also with the havoc of LaMotta's life. Chapman's cinematography is among the best ever done.

And of course there's De Niro. He won his second Oscar for this part, and it's one of the greatest ever put on film. His physical transformation (he gained sixty pounds for the later scenes) is well known, but his commitment to role goes even greater than that. His scene in the jail cell, in which he bangs his head and fists against the cinder block wall, make me wince every time I see it (I do wonder if he was actually hitting brick--the sound is clearly from a Foley artist, but the effect remains the same).

I've seen the film three times now and I've liked it more each time. The first time I saw it I was under-impressed for some reason (I remember it well, I saw it in an illegal double feature with Nine to Five--talk about a contrast). I was nineteen then, and identified much more with Ordinary People. I think what has improved it for me over the years is that I, too, can see some of LaMotta in me. He is an extreme, of course, but we all may have a bit of rage in us, a sense of not being fully respected, of being cheated on. It may be delusional, but it's there.

When LaMotta lost his championship to Robinson, he was beaten mercilessly, but after the fight, bloodied, he tells him, "I didn't go down, Ray. You didn't knock me down." And the last scene has De Niro, as a fat LaMotta, rehearsing Marlon Brando's "I coulda been a contender" monologue from On the Waterfront. A poignant moment, to be sure, but it also links two of the greatest performances in film history.