‘Raging Bull’ evokes little compassion
Early in his acting career, Robert De Niro received Academy Awards for screen portrayals of a fictional crime boss and a real-life boxer.
Somehow, one feels more compassion for De Niro as a young Vito Corleone in “The Godfather Part II” than as Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull.” It depends, I guess, on one’s value system or which film director, Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese, one prefers.
In becoming a Mafia don, Corleone resorts to murder, but in the code of organized crime, only the bad guys get hurt. Remaining true to the woman who bore him three sons and a daughter while pioneering a New York crime organization, Corleone observes, uh, family values.
Though he kills no one in the ring, the De Niro character in “Raging Bull” throws a fight and lands in the Dade County stockade after serving alcohol to under-age girls in his Miami nightclub. Insanely jealous, La Motta accuses his brother of having sex with his wife, to which Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci) replies, “It’s a sick question … and I’m not that sick that I’m gonna answer it.” After confronting his wife (Cathy Moriarty), LaMotta bursts into his brother’s home, pulls Joey away from the dinner table and pummels him.
The fight scenes of “Raging Bull” are beautifully composed, earning Thelma Schoonmaker one of her three Oscars for editing. So bloody is the ring action that Scorsese wisely made the movie in black and white. In the final scene, LaMotta shadow boxes in a dressing room after reciting Marlon Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” lines to Rod Steiger from “On the Waterfront.”
That said, boxing is to “Raging Bull” what olive oil is to “The Godfather.” The film’s true meaning lies deeper. Reviewing the movie again almost two decades later, Roger Ebert called the Scorsese classic “the most painful and heartrending portrait of jealousy in the cinema — an ‘Othello’ for our times. … the best film I’ve seen about the low self-esteem, sexual inadequacy and fear that lead some men to abuse women. Boxing is the arena, not the subject.”
LaMotta died Tuesday at age 95, reportedly of pneumonia. One should not expect the same outpouring of love for LaMotta received by Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey upon their passings. Nick Tosches authored a powerful biography of the Arkansas-born heavyweight champion who might have thrown one or both of his title fights with Ali. Yet, in his own way, more than 40 years after his suspicious death in Las Vegas, Sonny Liston evokes more sympathy than Jake LaMotta.
Scorsese portrays LaMotta as a champion, but not as a hero. In that sense, comparing middleweights, LaMotta is more like Midge Kelly (played by Kirk Douglas) in “Champion” than Rocky Graziano (Paul Newman) in “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” The Douglas character defies the mob in not throwing a fight but turns crooked after winning the title, betraying his wife and crippled brother (Arthur Kennedy). Midge Kelly chooses a big payday over his manager’s wife but dies in the ring before he can collect the bundle. Newman depicts Graziano as a loud-mouthed kid from Brooklyn who enters the military, slugs a captain and goes AWOL before becoming champion in the second of three epic fights with Tony Zale.
LaMotta wrested the title from Frenchman Marcel Cerdan, the love interest of singer Edith Piaf, after tanking against Billy Fox to settle a score with the mob. LaMotta handed Sugar Ray Robinson the first defeat of his career in 1943 but lost the title to Robinson in the 13th round of a
Chicago Stadium carnage on Valentine’s Day 1951. Scorsese shows a vertical LaMotta after the latter fight, battered beyond belief, blood dripping off the ropes, taunting Robinson, “You never got me down, Ray.”
Robinson stops LaMotta in Round 13 with Ted Husing, then the nation’s premier broadcaster, describing the action on TV. Husing’s aside to his audience before “the hard-luck round” explains what is missing from boxing today. We no longer, as Husing said of Robinson and LaMotta, “know the boys.”
Boxing, a star-driven sport, occupied center stage with the recent fight between boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. and martial-arts icon Conor McGregor. A seamier side was exposed last weekend when middleweights Camelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin battled to a split draw. One Adelaide Byrd scored it 118-110 for Alvarez while another judge gave Golovkin a narrow decision and a third judge scored it even. It’s to boxing’s benefit if the myopic judge be only inept.
Despite repeated attempts to ban the sport, pugilism is ever with us. If purity be missing, at least honesty prevails. The late Red Smith, greatest of all sportswriters, liked to say “there are very few archbishops in boxing.”