As this is going on, Jake has become obsessive over Vicky, presuming that everyone is trying to sleep with her and even going so far as to assume that she has slept with every man she touches, even if it’s a casual hello. All the while, Jake is trying to fight his way to the title match, getting stuck fighting Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes) over and over because no one else will fight either of them. He starts taking her out and eventually his wife leaves him and he’s free to pursue Vicky, and they start going together by 1943 (when she is still only 17) and are married in 1945. In some of the first scenes, we see La Motta battling it out in the ring and you cheer for his win, only to see him sitting home and verbally abusing his wife then terrorizing her by flipping the table over, all because he decided his steak was overcooked (without eating any of it to know).įrom there, La Motta and his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) are at the local pool where Jake spies Vicky (Cathy Moriarty), a 15-year-old blond beauty who captures his attention and obsession. Working from a screenplay by Paul Schrader (who wrote Taxi Driver for Scorsese) and Mardik Martin (who also worked on Scorsese screenplays for Mean Streets and New York, New York as well as Scorsese documentaries Italianamerican and The Last Waltz) that Scorsese and De Niro also did uncredited work on, Scorsese balanced out the empathy with the revulsion. Scorsese builds a curious model of enabling us to root for La Motta in the ring and despise him outside of it. The story tracks La Motta as a contender for the middleweight championship in 1941 all the way through retirement and disgrace in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It’s a true testament to Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, whose total commitment to the character of boxer Jake La Motta is just as impressive today as it was then.

The fact that it still stands as one of the greatest films of all time, and the best film of the 1980s and audiences still come back to it 35 years later is remarkable. Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese’s greatest film, shows that an audience can hate a character almost from the word go and still be compelled by their story enough to keep watching to the end of the film and then watch the film again and again. Feel free to share your memories of this film in the comments section below. Editor’s Note: This month marks the 35th anniversary of Raging Bull.

Raging bull 35th anniversary blu ray