Mastery of Scorsese & Raging Bull

Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is a lightning-in-a-bottle film. A variety of great talents were involved at uncertain points in their careers. The now-legendary director Scorsese had just come off of a drug overdose, and went into the film thinking it would be his swan song. Scorsese enlisted frequent collaborator Paul Schrader (who has a bizarre, fascinating directorial career of his own) for the script. The cast, which is now seen as a collection of legendary acting talents, was thrown together in a series of coincidences.             The visual style of Raging Bull is perplexing. The film’s director of photography, Michael Chapman, only worked with Scorsese on Taxi Driver (1976), The Last Waltz (1978), Raging Bull (1980) and the Michael Jackson-led short film Bad (1987). Like Taxi Driver, it has an almost neo-noir tone, with smoky, dramatically lit scenes. Maybe this is part of why the film is in black-and-white; Raging Bull tackles domestic relationships in a way that evokes the seedy love triangles of ‘50s noir. Chapman’s stark interior compositions feel obsessively prepared. However, it feels more defined by Scorsese’s visual sensibility than anything else.             The most remarkable formal aspect of the film is Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing. Scorsese and Schoonmaker are a cinematic match made in heaven. They first worked together in 1967 on Who’s That Knocking at My Door, and they have continued to collaborate until as recently as last year’s The Irishman. Schoonmaker’s timing surpasses natural talent; the stylistic pace of the editing perfectly accents the cinematography. Schoonmaker shows us LaMotta’s animalistic physicality through rapidly-cut action sequences, then forces us to stew in long takes in which LaMotta reflects on his misdeeds.             With regard to auteurism, Raging Bull is somewhat of an oddity. De Niro devised the original concept, as he was the first to read LaMotta’s autobiography upon which the film is based. Scorsese and De Niro made uncredited contributions to the script. At times, the film feels as if it is driven by Paul Schrader’s vision, and Scorsese himself has cited Schoonmaker’s editing as the stage where his films are defined.             Ultimately, despite strong contributions from various members of the cast and crew, Raging Bull is best understood as a character study from Scorsese’s perspective. He knew virtually nothing about boxing or sports of any kind, but because of the drug problems he had at this time, Scorsese related to the self destructive nature of Jake LaMotta. Virtually all of Scorsese’s character studies are defined by mental illness and self destruction; whether it comes from PTSD like in Bringing Out the Dead, OCD like The Aviator, or drug addiction like The Wolf of Wall Street.             The cast that Scorsese assembled for this film is a small miracle. De Niro was somewhat of a legend already, having turned in performances such as Taxi Driver, The Godfather: Part II and The Deer Hunter. Joe Pesci was a newcomer, though; De Niro saw him in a low-budget film and recommended him to Scorsese for the role, an instinct that paid off greatly. De Niro and Pesci’s chemistry over the course of their careers is some of the greatest ever captured in film. Frank Vincent and Cathy Moriarty also lacked experience on-screen, but they both turned in great performances and went on to successful Hollywood careers.             Paul Schrader’s script for Raging Bull is possibly the best of his career. Schrader has very strange perceptions of sex and masculinity, and LaMotta is a fitting outlet for his worldview. It is an extremely disturbing script, but it is actually rather subdued compared to some of Schrader’s other work (including the uncomfortable Taxi Driver).             Raging Bull is a landmark of American cinema, both for technical and thematic reasons. Hollywood was at a malleable point in 1980, coming off a decade of cinema defined by gritty dramas (Cassavetes, Coppola) and an emergence in new genre forms (Jaws, Star Wars). Raging Bull is like a halfway point between these two categories, drawing audiences in as a boxing drama and teaching them cathartic lessons about the human condition by the time it ends. Although it is certainly not a film made for commercial appeal, it achieved legendary status as a meeting of cinematic minds who would soon become household names, and is now one of the most critically acclaimed films from Hollywood.

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