| Raging Bull |
Page 2 of 2 Plot The film begins with Jake LaMotta late in his life practicing his stand-up comic routine, then flashes back to his early boxing career. Jake (De Niro) is a talented and determined fighter from the Bronx, and his brother Joey (Pesci) is his manager. Jake slowly climbs the ladder to the top of the boxing world (due to numerous setbacks mostly involving his personal life and weight problems), and courts Vicki (Moriarty) a 15-year-old girl he meets in his neighborhood. After his first wife leaves, he starts a relationship with her which eventually leads to marriage and children. As a boxer, Jake is promising but headstrong. He takes punches well, and fights with passion, but he refuses to curry favor with the mobsters who control boxing. To compete for the middleweight title he is forced to throw a match to Billy Fox, which grants him the right to fight for the title. He wins, and defends the title against challengers, which puts him at the top of his career. However, Jake becomes increasingly jealous of Vicki, and ultimately convinces himself of her infidelity with Joey. Enraged, he lashes out violently on his brother, who then abandons him. LaMotta loses his title to his rival Sugar Ray Robinson and retires from boxing a few years later due to his weight problems, and becomes a modestly successful stand-up comedian and nightclub owner. His wife finally divorces him, taking custody of his children, while LaMotta ends up in jail for abetting statutory rape. In jail he punches his cell walls and pounds his head against them with despair. After being released from jail, Jake tries to mend his relationship with Joey. The film ends as it began with Jake practicing his routine in front of the mirror. Reception Raging Bull was initially given a mixed reception. Scorsese had held an advanced screening for the film's producers and a few others at an MGM screening room. After the film had finished and the lights in the screening room came on, it is said there was a stunned silence in the room as if 'the audience had lost all powers of speech'. Many critics, however, were repelled by the film's violence and its unsympathetic central character. Although its cinematography and editing were universally praised, some saw the film as an empty exercise in style. Produced on a budget of $18 million, the film grossed $23 million. De Niro won the Academy Award for Best Actor, his second Academy Award following his win for 1974's The Godfather: Part II (for Best Supporting Actor) and his first for a leading role. Thelma Schoonmaker won the Academy Award for Film Editing, whose style was far different from fight scenes in other boxing films, such as the Rocky series. Raging Bull was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Joe Pesci), Best Supporting Actress (Cathy Moriarty), Best Cinematography (Michael Chapman), Best Sound (Donald O. Mitchell, Bill Nicholson, David J. Kimball, Les Lazarowitz), Best Director and Best Picture. When De Niro accepted his Oscar, he thanked Joey La Motta, "even though he is suing us." Scorsese lost to Robert Redford for best director (Ordinary People). United Artists was distracted by its worsening financial troubles in the wake of Heaven's Gate and could not adequately promote the film for awards. By the end of the 1980s, Raging Bull had cemented its reputation as a modern classic. It was voted the best film of the 1980s in numerous critics' polls and is regularly pointed to as both Scorsese's best film and one of the finest American movies ever made. Several prominent critics, among them Roger Ebert, declared the film to be an instant classic and the consummation of Scorsese's earlier promise. Ebert proclaimed it the best film of the 1980s, and the fourth greatest film of all time. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Originally, the American Film Institute ranked Raging Bull 24th of the greatest American movies of all time. However, when the list was updated 10 years later, Raging Bull rose twenty places on the list, reaching #4. and fifth on the Entertainment Weekly's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. The 2002 Sight and Sound Poll found listed tied for 6th with Bicycle Thieves. A two-CD soundtrack was released in 2005, long after the movie was released, because of earlier difficulties receiving permissions for many of the songs, which Scorsese selected from his childhood memories growing up in New York. The movie poster was painted by Kunio Hagio. References: Raging Bull at Wikipedia |
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