Raging Bull (1980) Maintains its place as a Towering Champion of Cinema (Review)

Like an unshaded light bulb, Martin Scorsese’s 1980 classic shines an uncomfortably bright light that casts shadows as stark as what it exposes. What is exposed is the soul of Jake LaMotta, middleweight boxer of the 1940s and 50s, night club entertainer of the 1960s, and an abusive, violent and paranoid person throughout his life. Produced and released before the term ‘toxic masculinity’ was in wide circulation, Raging Bull’s LaMotta could be the poster boy for this description, a portrayal of a personality that incorporates the ‘and all’ part of warts and all and slams with all the power of a left hook to the jaw.

Much as Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro in Oscar-winning form, is something of an impenetrable figure, so it can be hard to penetrate a classic film outside of its classic status. Raging Bull? Yes, that’s a classic boxing movie, isn’t it? Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, needs to be seen, of course. The must-see aura of a classic can overpower the viewing experience, but Raging Bull remains an unflinchingly powerful watch. Just as Jake often stands in the ring receiving multiple blows, so do Scorsese, director of photography Michael Chapman and editor Thelma Schoonmaker assail the viewer with every cinematic trick in the book (and possibly a few new ones). Famously the film is shot in black and white with some colour film inserts that present the happy family of Jake, his second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) and his brother Joey (Joe Pesci), while the monochrome cinematography of the film’s majority presents the brutal reality both inside the ring where blood spurts and faces crunch, and the even greater savagery of the LaMottas’ homelife. Forced perspective, close-ups and long shots, slo-mo action, freezeframes, whip pans, crash zooms, long takes, jump cuts, travelling shots, a shifting soundscape of voices, bodily contact, doors, flashbulbs and more; all are used to bring the viewer alongside Jake, feel the impact on his body, the sprays of sweat, blood, water and Vaseline, as well as the agitation and anxiety between the characters.

Despite the prolonged discomfort in the film, whether a bout between Jake and Sugar Ray Robinson or the infamous ‘You fuck my wife?’ scene, there are also moments of exquisite beauty in the film. The visual palette becomes richer as time progresses; light shines through steam and smoke; many of the fights are accompanied by lyrical music, including one to the tune of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. The narrative grammar is also striking, as the colour home movies help to show the passage of time, while super text on screen announces the fights like posters, breaking the flow of events as the film shifts into a different register. This jagged structure robs the film of a clear sense of narrative progression, but also helps it burrow to greater depths. There are visual echoes such as Jake punching Joey and Jake punching a wall, and while the fight scenes take place in rings that appear expansive due to wide angles, the more brutal domestic scenes are often obscured by furniture and tight angles, adding to the claustrophobia.

The internal nature of Jake’s violence highlights that the true combat is within Jake’s soul, but this combat is not displayed through histrionics. The tales of De Niro’s approach to the role are legendary, as he got himself into athletic shape, trained with LaMotta, fought and won amateur boxing matches, then took four months off from shooting to gain the weight needed to portray LaMotta in later life. Perhaps surprisingly, for the most part De Niro’s performance is understated, muttering rather than shouting (with one notable exception), his arms either hanging at his sides or close to his face in a guard posture. When he threatens, it is largely through presence rather than movement, which helps to express Jake’s difficulty with expression. Smiles are a struggle, understanding of people is hard, and the constant suspicion comes across as both motivating and paralysing. Joe Pesci delivers a more overt performance with snappier delivery (that would characterise many of his later roles) that exposes affection for his brother tinged with fear before these give way to coldness in his final scene. In her screen debut, Moriarty shines as Vickie, combining street awareness with starlet glamour, her naïve uncertainty around Jake giving way to resigned loathing. The supporting performances add to the sense of place, Scorsese putting his beloved New York on screen with all the pungency and atmosphere of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. From the blinding sunlight of a public pool to the interiors of the Copacabana night club, Scorsese creates a living, breathing environment through which Jake shuffles and swings, but never settles.

Arguably, Raging Bull’s cinematic brio might be to make up for an absence at the centre of the film, as we learn little about Jake other than he is, as the title indicates, raging. Raging against opponents, raging against his own weight (sometimes too low, sometimes too high), raging against his family until the final most devastating confrontation with, literally and figuratively, a brick wall. Yet this absence is part of what makes the film so compelling, as the viewer is required (indeed, demanded) to find something on screen they can attach to. Any sympathy we may feel for Jake is left entirely to the viewer, as despite the film’s unflinching gaze it is never judgemental. Jake performs many unforgivable acts, and it would be fair to describe him as a hateful figure, but do we actually hate him? If not, it would be even harder to find love for the character. But that is potentially the film’s greatest strength – when overtly negative features are presented in such intimate detail, the viewer must not only make up their own mind, but also question their own preconceptions for making such an assessment. Raging Bull, for all its physicality, is a film that peels away layers of the soul, exposing a space within that soul that the viewer must assess. The boldest art disrupts expectations and prompts reflection in the consumer. Through its intense gaze into the abyss of Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull encourages this reflection and thus maintains its place as a towering champion of cinema.

This Criterion Collection release comes in a new 4K digital master, approved by Scorsese, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. The release includes a 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR, as well as a Blu-ray with the film and special features. This upgrade does highlight a difficulty of older films being transferred to high definition, which is that more detail shows up than is necessarily helpful. The image is certainly bright and vibrant, but it also shows the joints, quite literally in the case of De Niro’s prosthetic nose in some sequences.

Thankfully, this is a minor criticism of a pretty decent package. The film comes with three audio commentaries, all of which offer a range of insights. The first features Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, recorded in 1990. The second is from 2004, featuring a range of voices including director of photography Chapman, producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler, casting director Cis Corman, music consultant Robbie Robertson, actors Teresa Saldana and John Turturro, and sound effects editor Frank Warner. This collection of speakers is a reminder of the extraordinary collaboration that goes into film production. The third commentary provides more retrospection on the path leading up to the film featuring Jake LaMotta himself, his nephew Jason Lustig and screenwriters Mardik Martin and Paul Schrader, also recorded in 2004.

The timing of these commentaries, the more recent ones themselves twenty years old, demonstrates the comprehensive account and history of the film that this release provides. Some of the extras are from the time of the 1980 release, as noted others date from 2004. Some are from 2010 and still others were created in 2022. This range of responses with different extents of hindsight is testament to Raging Bull’s enduring legacy.

The most detailed account of the production history comes from Fight Night, a four-part making-of programme featuring key members of the cast and crew. Recorded in 2004, the recounting by such figures as Scorsese, De Niro, Chapman, Schoonmaker, Winkler, Martin, Schrader and more remain fresh and vibrant despite the passage of time. Scorsese is a highlight here, an open and engaging speaker unafraid to distinguish the film’s characters from the real people they are based on. Scorsese’s vibrancy contrasts with the reserve of De Niro, a distinction that might explain the length of their collaborative relationship, at the time of writing now lasting fifty years. Scorsese also demonstrates humility, divulging the concerns he had with the film and how he addressed them, acknowledging that others will interpret the film differently, as well as mentioning that British filmmaker Michael Powell suggested the use of black and white. Aspects of the casting are illuminating, such as De Niro being driving the film due to his strong attachment to LaMotta’s autobiography, as well as Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty being plucked out of obscurity for these roles that would make their careers. The different talking heads provide great insights into their craft, such as the lighting challenges Chapman faced and Schoonmaker having to tell Scorsese his favourite take had been lost as well as a discussion she had with a projectionist. Another amusing anecdote is that Scorsese and Chapman had to turn to the teamsters on set for filming the home movie footage, as neither of them were capable of shooting like amateurs. The success of the film is also discussed, including the filmmakers’ surprise when the film was nominated for multiple Oscars. Interestingly, despite ‘only’ winning two, Editing and Leading Actor, Raging Bull would go on to be declared the best film of the 1980s by the American Film Institute, which demonstrates the significance of legacy and perhaps the inherent shortsightedness in awards for the year. Speaking of legacy, the credits for each of these short documentaries play over different posters for the film, which further adds to the historical placement of Raging Bull.

An extra from the time of the original release is a television interview from 1981 recorded by Belgian television with actor Cathy Moriarty and the real Vickie LaMotta. Vickie gives a detailed and open account of her life with Jake and how this fed into the movie, while Moriarty explains her experience of learning about LaMotta only once she was cast, as well what she learned during the production, especially from De Niro. Jake LaMotta himself appears in an interview recorded in 1990, where he comes across as witty if somewhat self-aggrandising figure. Both of these interviews are simply shot, and in their brevity offer little insight. More telling is ‘Remembering Jake’, a programme from 2010 that features members of the Veteran Boxers Association of New York, reminiscing about boxing in general and LaMotta in particular. The contrast between these different extras is noticeable, as the much higher visual quality of ‘Remembering Jake’ stands out with an exterior shot of a wet New York street glistening in neon, perhaps deliberately reminiscent of Taxi Driver. The various boxers are intercut with clips from the movie, though the anecdotes focus on LaMotta himself, a figure known after his boxing career ended but before the film came out. These men are warm and engaging, in some cases visibly battered and exhibiting some very Nooo Yawk accents. Their presentation is charming but never condescending, and they provide some interesting analyses of fights. While they raise some critical views of LaMotta, these are largely tempered by warmth, perhaps suggesting that the film is critical enough.

As mentioned above, the collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro has spanned fifty years, and the release includes a section highlighting this famous partnership. This section includes three short programmes, the first two MGM productions from 2010. The aptly named MARTY AND BOBBY explains how they first met and their shared background, as well as De Niro’s maintained empathy for a character described by producers as a ‘cockroach’. These insights are especially pleasing insights as De Niro is often taciturn in interviews, and the discussions about what more the two could do together are interesting to view in the aftermath of The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon. The next short is MARTY ON FILM, where the director emphasises the importance of film as an American art form and his history with the medium. Scorsese aficionados may not find much here that is new, but it does serve as a useful introduction for those unfamiliar with the director’s history. Scorsese’s reflections on his career are intriguing, as he mentions that he had little sense of genre in his film education, and is indeed uncertain over whether Raging Bull is a ‘biopic’. The third extra in this section is sadly disappointing, ROBERT DE NIRO ON ACTING, an audio recording of an AFI seminar from 1980. The audio is played over a still from Raging Bull, and the quality sounds like it would from the time. It is unfortunate that this was not upgraded, and while De Niro offers various insights into the acting process, it is not very visually engaging. Perhaps a link to the Criterion website with a downloadable podcast would have made more sense.

The highlight of the extras is also the most recent: two video essays created in 2022, one by film critic Geoffrey O’Brien, ‘Pour Everything In’ and another, ‘Gloves Off’ by film critic Sheila O’Malley. O’Brien provides an analysis of the film overall, including the fragmentation and movement and the blending of dreams and reality. The analysis is insightful and draws great parallels between the fragments of the film as well as the development of different Jake(s). Much as Scorsese makes it clear the film characters are not the real people, O’Brien describes the film as an interpretation rather than a documentation. In ‘Gloves Off’, O’Malley closely analyses spaces, performances and character dynamics, casting and the interpretations of images. O’Malley’s use of language is evocative as she describes Cathy Moriarty as having the ‘breath of the Bronx’ on her, and astutely identifies Jake’s Madonna/Whore complex as well as a range of influences upon this film of American identity. These influences range from Shakespeare’s Othello to the acknowledged influence of On the Waterfront (1954), with a keen comparison of De Niro’s performance of Jake’s performance of Marlon Brando’s performance of Terry Molloy (yes, that many layers) with Brando’s performance of Terry and a final line that is as telling as the Bible verse that closes the film.

A trailer rounds out the digital extras, and the edition also comes with written essays by poet Robin Robertson and film critic Glenn Kenny. Even without these materials, Raging Bull’s monumental place in cinema makes it a must own for serious cinephiles as well as Scorsese or De Niro fans, or indeed afficionados of boxing films and biopics. With Criterion’s comprehensive collection of analysis and history, this release is indispensable.

Vincent’s Archive – Raging Bull