It wasn’t until Scorsese’s spiraling drug addiction landed him at death’s door on Labor Day weekend in 1978 that the character finally clicked for him.

The movie is unflinching in its depiction of this “cockroach,” in its horrors daring us to see that there but for the grace of God go we.ĭe Niro had been hounding his friend and frequent collaborator about the project for years, but the famously sports-averse director could find little of interest in LaMotta’s memoir.

He’s enraged by affections he assumes must be suspicious or soiled in some way, because what could these people see in such a wretch? None of this is articulated or explained, but instead brilliantly evoked via Robert De Niro’s career-topping performance and some of Scorsese’s most fearlessly subjective filmmaking techniques. Scorsese’s masterpiece is a searingly personal exploration of jealousy and self-loathing, seen (sometimes literally) through the eyes of a man who considers himself so unworthy of love that he cannot help hurting those who care about him most. Even the head of the studio making the picture called him “a cockroach.”Īnd yet “Raging Bull” - which returns to the Coolidge Corner Theatre this week in a new 4K digital restoration - is one of the great American films, not for what it tells us about LaMotta, but for what it tells us about ourselves. This was hardly the kind of historical figure one expected to see in a Hollywood biopic. Married seven times, LaMotta admitted to throwing a fight for the mob and served six months on a Florida chain gang after being convicted of procuring an underage girl at one of his clubs. The Bronx-bred prizefighter and former middleweight champ was an especially unsavory sort, a legend in boxing circles for his brute viciousness and an almost superhuman ability to withstand punishment in the ring. In his 1980 Village Voice review of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” critic Andrew Sarris admitted being puzzled as to “why anyone would want to make a movie about Jake LaMotta.” This was a sentiment shared by many at the time. Robert De Niro is Jake LaMotta in 'Raging Bull.' (Courtesy Park Circus)

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