If we didn’t appreciate Scorsese’s de facto ownership of the dolly push into close-up before Raging Bull, there was no denying it after 1980.
And so he battles his wife because she overcooks his steak, and shouts threats at the neighbor who overhears their argument and calls Jake an animal, and goads his brother, Joey (Joe Pesci), into punching him in the face just so he can prove that his toughness extends to the world outside the ring. Jake is driven by ego and pride, suspicious of the motives of others, fueled by jealousy, standing alone against all comers, even those closest to him. However, Jake seems more concerned about Tommy taking a cut of his prize money than about any moral dilemma or delusions of his own integrity.
The LaMottas’ protests are futile, and we see our first example of a theme that casts Jake, in his own eyes at least, as a pawn of the system.Īnd indeed, he’s no less indentured than any other fighter to the mobster Tommy Como (based on real-life boxing promoter and Lucchese family soldier Frankie Carbo), without whose influence he’d be unable to get a title shot. The arena organist launches into “The Star Spangled Banner” in a vain attempt to call the mob to order.
Bedlam erupts as Reeves’ corner men carry him out like a sagging body bag. Saved by the bell, Reeves is awarded a controversial unanimous decision. Jake, losing on points, rallies late and punishes Reeves, knocking him out as time expires in the final round. Fights are taking place in the crowd during the fight in the ring. Even the extended opening credit sequence, lyrical as it is, depicts Jake in his leopard-print robe, shadow-boxing, stalking the ring - almost literally an animal in a cage.Īfter a brief glimpse ahead at 1964, when we encounter the champion in twilight, bloated of torso and bulbous of nose, trading on his past glory to perform canned soliloquies in a cheesy nightclub act, we cut to Cleveland, September 1941, LaMotta vs.
Very generally speaking - putting aside the sport’s more flamboyant, incendiary or infamous public figures, its Muhammad Alis, its Floyd Mayweathers, its Mike Tysons - prizefighters are often reserved, soft-spoken people in their daily lives, men who train hard in the gym, fight ferociously in the ring, take out their aggression in the practice of their trade, and leave everything they have in the squared circle, men with nothing left to prove, who sleep well at night.įrom the outset, however, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull establishes its protagonist, the legendary middleweight Jake LaMotta (Academy Award winner Robert De Niro), as an outlier of that category, an untamed beast, a man whose anguish cannot be quelled, whose personal demons cannot be exhausted by the cathartic violence of the ring.
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