RAGINGBULL
DIRECTED BY: MARTIN SCORSESE - WRITTEN BY: MARDIK MARTIN, ROBERT CHARTOFF
STARRING: ROBERT DENIRO, JOE PESCI, CATHY MORIARTY - BLACK & WHITE - RELEASED: I980

Director Martin Scorsese, growing up in a tough New York neighborhood, wasn’t one of the big kids. He was short and had asthma. He spent a lot of his time in the local cinema, soaking up the films of the late forties and fifties. At one point, he thought he might become a priest; instead, he channeled his energies into filmmaking. But the Italian and Catholic influences remain, as well as the violence he had seen growing up.

After a some basically student undertakings, he broke through with Mean Streets, based on some of the characters he had known in the old neighborhood, following Hemingway’s dictum to “write about what you know”. Mean Streets not only made Scorsese’s entrance into directorial success, but also introduced young actors Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel to the world. It was the beginning of a cycle of films with the gritty New York sensibility, Coppola having already prepared the way with his hugely successful The Godfather a year earlier.

Raging Bull was in part homage to Champion (I949), a breakout film for Kirk Douglas based on a screenplay by Ring Lardner. Champion was the story of two brothers who team up to make eating money by one of them boxing. They meet a trainer in LA and before long Midge (Kirk Douglas) is in the big-time in New York fighting for the championship.

Coming off the success of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Scorsese reportedly went through some personal problems and heavy-duty partying before going on to the making of Raging Bull, the moniker of Jake LaMotta, a real-life boxing legend of the I940s and early 50s. It too is the story of two brothers who team-up and one of them boxes, but a woman drives them apart. In Scorsese’s vision, it’s a cinema of purity; no side plots, added characters or complicated meanings to tease out. It’s the story of a fall from grace, of uncontrolled anger and jealousy and the possibility of eventual redemption.

The film is structured by vignettes of Jake's and Joey's life wrapped around some startling moments in the ring. Jake’s fights are presented as either Jake mauling a seemingly helpless fighter, or Jake taking a dive; which he signals by standing with his arms at his sides while his opponent demolishes him. We never learn anything about boxing technique or strategy, nor do we ever see Jake training or preparing. Whether Scorsese saw his own life of filmmaking reflected in the story is an interesting speculation.

The payoff ring action shots are horrible and brutal, but mesmerizing and beautifully photographed in extremely high-contrasting velvet blacks and blinding whites, ending with an orgasmic explosion of flashbulbs as photographers climb into the ring. These passages have a plastic beauty that prevails over the bloody spectacle they celebrate. An idea first heard in Champion; the sound of the crowd’s blood lust is mixed with animal roars, sirens and screams.

On the home front, Jake's gorgeous wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) is causing agonies of jealousy and suspicion. She's perhaps too beautiful for any man's peace of mind, and her impassive face is hard to read. As he notices the tone of his brother change over time, he thinks he can smell betrayal. This film walks the razor's edge as to whether Jake's brother Joey is in Jakes corner. Not one to internalize anything, he uses his fists on anyone who might be guilty of infractions. What many people fantasize about, he does. When his wife comments that a rival fighter is handsome, he pulverizes the man’s face out of all recognition in the ring (unfortunately reprised in Fight Club). If you say you like film violence, Raging Bull that will test that preference.

The injection of Italian family values represented by the pot of pasta sauce on the stove in later Scorsese pictures is missing here as domestic violence in the boils over instead. When one of his rages is rising within him, the action around Jake slows and stills; you sense what it means to go berserk. Jake's destined to see some hard times in his life, but he never gives up on himself. There are those to whom this film will be just a picturesque travelogue; which doesn’t touch them; and for that they should be thankful. For others, there will be a feeling of recognition in the story.

One thing Jake is not is dumb. He reads people pretty well, and he's not impressed by the gumbas and mafiosi that hang around with boxers. He's a straight-ahead guy, he knows how to go after what he wants, which he usually gets, whether good for him or not. But he's got a boxer's quick reflexes and judgement about opponents, in or out of the ring. As in Champion, machismo and women are his downfall, accompanied by the melancholy notes of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, which rescues his film from being a boxing film and takes it into the realm of the infinite.

The relationship of the two brothers is complex and varies according to the scene, but it's plain that Joey, while loyal to Jake in many ways, is also a competitor and perhaps even more mean spirited than Jake, although not always using his fists, except in one frenetic scene.

It’s hard to find words to describe the performance in which Robert DeNiro disappears inside the character of Jake LaMotta. It’s like a magic act, in which the slight of hand cannot be detected. As LaMotta grows older, DeNiro acquires a paunch and heavy jowls; is it really the same man? The story goes that DeNiro ate mountains of pasta to gain the weight.

Raging Bull is minus the usual star turns, stage business, and manufactured dialogue to make the actors seem intelligent or engaging or sexy. It's about how some of us have something pure to bring to the world, and how it's sullied and dirtied and mocked until we lose it. Most folks can't wait to sell themselves out, but the artist has to hold on to a certain childish purity to bring us messages from that world.

It’s pure film about pure rage, an all too human trait that ties us to the animals. There is no explanation for it, its part of us. Many folks find Raging Bull to be one of the best films of the last fifty years, including this writer



Opening Credits ---- Scene Montage --- Domestic Violence --- Trailer --- Jake's Monologue

Note:
(a) When Jake finally wins the title fight the referee who goes to Jake's corner to tell him is the real Jake LaMotta.
Raging Bull: Review, Synopsis


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