A Long Time Coming: My Ode to Raging Bull

Tonight, I pay homage to Martin Scorsese's 1980 classic, Raging Bull, arguably one of the greatest motion pictures ever made.

Through the years this movie never fails to surface in my memories of the American cinema or in many a conversation piece I have with my movie aficionado friends.

According to Scorsese in 1980, Raging Bull was to be his last project. He enlisted the help of long time friend and collaborator, Robert De Niro (De Niro originally approached Scorsese about the project after reading the biography of Jake La Motta) and an ensemble cast which included: Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty, Teresa Saldana, Frank Vincent, and Nicholas Colasanto.

With the madness of Van Gogh and Pollock, the methodical and meticulous Scorsese used a noir canvas to portray the life of volatile boxing legend, Jake La Motta. Struggling with drug addiction at the time, it would truly be a redemption song that paralleled his life.

The movie was shot in two parts. The majority of scenes(including all the fighting sequences) were shot first. Movie production had shut down for several months so that Robert De Niro could gain the necessary weight he needed to portray La Motta in his post-fighting career.

Raging Bull was released on November 14, 1980 and enjoyed only moderate box office success, grossing 23 million dollars. Critics detested the movie's gritty realism and violence, deeming it unfit to stand in the company of adventure and fantasy films that dominated film-making at the time.

Alluding both critical and commercial success for almost a decade, Raging Bull finally received the praise and recognition it so rightly deserved, garnering the respect and acknowledgment of renowned movie critics, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, declaring it one of the greatest films ever made. This sentiment was shared by The Library of Congress, who deemed the movie historically and culturally significant.