The 1980 biographical sports film Raging Bull transcends both genre descriptors often attached to it. Yes, it tells the true story of Jake Lamotta, an Italian-American boxer who hit his peak in the 1940’s and 50’s. So technically it is biographical and about sports, yet neither of these words leap to mind when trying to summarise the experience it delivers upon the rolling of the credits. When approached to direct it, Martin Scorsese was initially disinterested as he “always thought that boxing was boring”. It wasn’t until he started to see himself in LaMotta that he grew more attached to the project, viewing the boxing ring as an allegory for life’s obstacles, ambition, and failure.
In one of Raging Bull’s first scenes, Jake expresses his insecurities about his hands to his brother Joey, played by Joe Pesci. They’re small, like “girl’s hands”. He knows he will never have the speed, finesse, or technique of so many of his rivals. But he has sheer strength and resilience on his side, being able to withstand an astounding number of hits without being knocked down. His gains a reputation of being a bully in the ring, delivering barrages of constant, heavy blows to overwhelm his opponents, to the point that they would be scared to fight him.
I don’t think it is an exaggeration to name Robert De Niro’s performance here as one of the most impressive ever captured on film. LaMotta is numb to all kinds of sensation, though where this is his strength in the boxing ring, it is his undoing in his domestic life. He seethes with anger and envy as he watches his beautiful young wife speak to other men, no matter how platonically, working himself up into a state of obsessive paranoia over her loyalty. He can’t feel the affection she has for him, and the mere thought that others might be experiencing the kind of mutual love he is incapable of infuriates him. Yet in those few moments where Jake does get close to physical intimacy, he recoils – to win his fights, he must stay numb. He douses his erection with a jug of ice-cold water, committing self-sabotage as means to beat his boxing opponent.
We witness eight matches in Raging Bull, and all except the first open on hard cuts from scenes of quiet, domestic life. The contrast is striking, as great as the difference between neorealist cinema and stark expressionism. Whether he is in the ring or at home, De Niro often has a sparring partner with whom his exchanges often seem naturalistic, sometimes even improvised. In the ring, these interactions are heightened by tracking shots, whip pans, slow-motion, freeze frames, pitch black backgrounds, smoky lights, intermittent flashbulbs – a huge assortment of cinematographic techniques are on display here to throw off our orientation as Jake furiously pummels his opponent, or conversely gets pummelled by them.
Working in conjunction with these visual elements is the sound design and rapid editing, reaching its peak in the final match between Jake and Sugar Ray Robinson. As Jake comes to the realisation that the fight is lost, Raging Bull strips back its chaotic sound design into complete silence. A weakened LaMotta cowers beneath Sugar Ray, who is lit from behind like a priest preparing a sacrifice. In those slow few seconds where the outside world no longer exists, we acutely experience Jake’s numbness. The boxing ring is his confessional where he can spill out his frustration and anger, but it is also where he can take the self-loathing punishment he knows he deserves.
Yet even as Jake loses the match, he never once hits the canvass. “You never got me down Ray” he gloats, even having just experienced a humiliating defeat. Jake loses everything in his personal and professional life, but his anchor is his ability to never be pushed down completely. His persistence makes him a truly terrifying adversary to come up against, whether in the confines of a boxing ring or in more personal settings.
As Jake’s career declines over the years, so too does the rest of his life. His wife leaves him, he becomes a sleazy stand-up comedian at a Miami nightclub, and he eventually gets jailed for introducing underage girls to men. With no family or boxers to clash with, he turns his hatred inwards even more. “Why, why, why me?” he cries out as he bangs his head against the walls of his cell. The answer is annoyingly clear to us – his wilful ignorance led to pedophilia, and so he is in prison. But LaMotta either can’t or won’t make that connection. He is a victim of his own stupidity and depravity.
Here, De Niro is at his rawest and most tortured that we have ever seen him in his entire career. For every toxic, hyper-masculine character he has ever played, this feels like the purest expression of miserable self-pity that they have often felt but been too proud to show. Where the boxing scenes are dynamic and fast-paced, the long take of this jail scene forces us to wallow with Jake in his own pathetic agony.
The last we see of Jake is backstage at his nightclub. Old, fat, and lonely. A very different Jake to the one we saw earlier. His voice is weak, his posture slouched, and his delivery of Marlon Brando’s famous “I coulda been a contender” monologue from On the Waterfront is stilted. In the original text, Brando plays a former boxer who could have been successful if not for the pressure from his brother to take a dive in an important match. Here, Jake directs that blame at a mirror, and it is reflected back onto him. Where Brando delivered this monologue with anguish, Jake’s recitation is flat and lifeless. His existence is sapped of anything meaningful, and yet this small moment of reflection indicates some recognition of his own failures. It is far too late for him to make any amends, but this shouldering of a small bit of responsibility might be the most we can hope for out of a man like Jake.
Forty years later, Raging Bull is still highly regarded as featuring some of the most beautiful black-and-white cinematography, and one of the greatest performances in film history. Scorsese shook off the shackles of realism in his depiction of boxing, using it as a conduit through which a toxic, self-destructive man can unleash his most masochistic urges. Who would have guessed that a man who found the sport “boring” would be able to tap so deeply into its psychological roots?
