Martin Scorsese’s film Raging Bull is not about boxing, but about a violent man whose jealous tendencies and sexual insecurities drop him from the king of the ring straight down to the mat. For Jake LaMotta, the punishment he endures in the ring acts as confession; he is punishing himself. In the entire film, we only see him practice once – tactics are not what drive LaMotta, his paranoia does.
Consumed by jealousy after his wife mistakenly calls his future opponent “good-looking,” LaMotta smashes the man to a pulp. He’s merciless, holding the poor guy up so he can continue the beating. We can almost hear LaMotta thinking “oh, you’re not getting away that easy!” The mob boss in the audience turns to his partner and says, “He ain’t pretty no more.” When the referee calls off the fight, the victorious Jake (Robert De Niro) doesn’t look at his opponent, but at his wife (Cathy Moriarty). His message could not be more clear.
We are led to believe that Raging Bull is based on the life of Jake LaMotta, who made his way out of the Bronx to become a World Middleweight Champion. From what we can tell, LaMotta was an angry man, whom after leaving boxing, became a night-club owner and a loser of a stand-up comic, and eventually got himself arrested for crippling the innocence of a 14-year-old girl. Was this the real Jake LaMotta? We don’t know. What we do know, however, is that the real LaMotta was around during the film’s production, and that two of Scorsese’s cherished collaborators, De Niro and screenwriter Paul Schrader, were attracted to the material. It seems that Scorsese’s early work liked to focus on the lives of the tortured, the violent, and the guilty. The previous film these men worked on together was Taxi Driver.
Inside the bold black and white cinematography, LaMotta is presented as a man constantly in battle. Whether it be physical or mental, he is always fighting. During the film’s title sequence (which has become itself a historic piece of filmmaking), we see LaMotta sparring in his robe by the corner of the ring. His body seems to be in a trance as it bobs up and down from the mat, and the scene’s slow-motion effect, like in Taxi Driver, puts us into the character’s mind. LaMotta seems to be waiting for an opponent who never arrives.
He is fighting himself.
He’s a boxer, so of course, he doesn’t spend all of his time on himself. It seems as though Jake has the need to fight anyone he comes across. He must prove himself to everybody. His masculinity must be known. He goes after his wives, his family, the Mafia, his opponents, his fans, the list doesn’t stop. Another problem the man has, as many of Scorsese’s characters do, is the inability to trust and feel at ease around women. The main source of the LaMotta character’s drive is a jealous obsession with his wife, Vickie. From the first moment he sees her by the pool, he is transfixed by the blond beauty, and even though she is much younger than he is and he slaps her around, in many scenes, she appears bigger than the boxer.
Jake has an extreme prejudice towards women – he believes that once they succumb to his touch, they become untrustworthy. He is not threatened by Vickie until they get married, then he has to know where she is and what she’s doing around the clock. We sense his discomfort as the film once again goes into slow-motion any time she moves towards another man, whether it be for a simple conversation or a normal formality. Although the film gives us no evidence that she ever cheated on him, he beats her like she did. He wouldn’t be suspicious if she wasn’t guilty.
The only man who has any control over the animal is his brother, Joey (Joe Pesci). Theirs is the closest relationship in the film. Joey tries to explain to Jake how dangerous his obsession is, but Jake coldly informs him, “I don’t trust you when it comes to her,” and even though Joey loves him, he too becomes a victim of Jake’s jealousy.
Scorsese’s fight scenes are extremely brutal, even by today’s standards. The punches are amplified by powerful thuds on the soundtrack, and tiny tubes in the boxer’s hair would spurt and spray out sweat and blood. During one of his many fights with Sugar Ray Robinson, LaMotta lies on the ropes, begging Robison to take him down. He never does, but those in the front row of the audience get drenched by the attempt.
Scorsese also broke the rules of boxing pictures by staying inside the ring. The camera stays put next to the action, and we can feel the pain of every jab just as the fighters do. Scorsese also changed the size and shape of the ring to set the mood – sometimes it is claustrophobic, sometimes it is the size of a battlefield.
The film goes through a strict transition by the scenes featuring the older Jake LaMotta, overweight and balding. Running a nightclub, he never reaches the glory he had in the ring. De Niro requested that the film stop its production so he could put on the weight needed for these scenes. He came back four months later, and 70 pounds heavier.
It was that kind of dedication that led to his Oscar win. The film also won for best editing, with six other nominations including those for supporting actor (Pesci) and actress (Moriarty), cinematography, and director. It lost best picture to Ordinary People, but time has decreed a different verdict, voted in three different polls as the greatest film of the 1980’s.
No other movie has portrayed jealousy the way it is portrayed in Raging Bull. It analyzes and exposes many of the roots that could lead a man to beat a woman including the intense fear and the low self-esteem. It is simply one of the most painful showings in cinema. There are scenes, like the one mentioned above, where LaMotta puts his hands down and lets himself get pounded. But he never goes down, and the reason seems clear: he’s too tortured by his own soul to give himself the satisfaction of quitting.
