The making of Raging Bull would be a consuming creative journey, the final product a gritty valentine to filmmaking, a clarion call of reinvention, andÖ well, something ostensibly about a heel's penance and absolution.

Finally, Scorsese saw the potential for cinematic transformation in the putrid life of LaMotta, or, more likely, recognized a need to reenergize his dedication to the craft by way of utilizing every trick, every angle, every last article of filmic vocabulary. The passion for the project was initially De Niro's, and he tenaciously kept after his own private John Ford until the director wound up in a hospital 'exhausted' due to a ferocious cocaine habit. As is repeated several times on this excellent two-disc set's many supplements, he didn't want to make this movie. This is partly due to Scorsese's distaste for boxing, and sports in general. Though Scorsese and writers Mardik Martin and Paul Schrader succeed at conveying the agonizingly manipulative influence of organized crime that has always tainted the sport, particularly in the era that its subject, Jake LaMotta, contended and briefly held the Middleweight title, forcing fighters to throw a fight or two as a profitable act of fealty before getting their shot at the belt, Raging Bull is finally as much about boxing as The Fountainhead is about architecture. They shouldn't have been (save for maybe the crowning of Rocky over, say, Fat City, or When We Were Kings). So, when Sports Illustrated broke ranks last year to hand the belt over to Rocky (the movie that out-pointed Scorsese's Taxi Driver for Best Picture in 1976!), many eyebrows were raised. Raging Bull: Special Edition MGM Home Video Starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty,įrank Vincent, and Theresa Saldana Written by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martinīased on a Book by Jake La Motta, Joseph Carter and Peter SavageĪmong the many accolades that have been conferred upon Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull since its release in November of 1980 is that of 'Best Boxing Film Ever Made,' an encomium it seems to have garnered simply by virtue of every film magazine and society declaring the picture the finest achievement of a decade badly starved for greatness. The DVD Journal | Reviews : Raging Bull: Special Edition

Joe of raging bull