In Scorsese’s portrait of LaMotta’s externalization of his inner conflict, the director captures recurrent themes that appear throughout his body of work in their most crystallized form. The film also became a personal statement from the filmmaker.
A passion project for the actor, De Niro’s LaMotta weighs his masculine instincts against his Christian guilt and finds the only way to release the inevitable conflict is through unrelenting violence, in or outside the ring.
The character comes to life through Robert De Niro’s greatest performance, a legendary bodily transformation only matched by the psychological complexity on display. Middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta, driven by aggression, jealousy, sexual repression, and self-hatred, becomes a text for Scorsese to critique masculinity and masculine violence. Martin Scorsese composes an artful examination of a brutal subject in Raging Bull. ( This essay was originally published on June 29, 2009.
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