![]() LaMotta is aware on some level that he is a slave to fear and malice and boxes to compensate. Then he cries like a baby and is ashamed of surrendering. The only time he gives in to someone is by throwing a match to propitiate the mafia in exchange for a shot at the title. ![]() They serve him poorly outside, making him unbearable for both others and himself. LaMotta’s anger and angst serve him well in the ring, making him a better fighter. He hits her and gradually drives her away. Later, he becomes paranoid, convinced that his woman is cheating on him. Then he is stood in the ring, hitting someone. In the opening scene, he objurgates his first wife for overcooking his steak, and when his brother tries to reconcile, he turns to him. LaMotta is belligerent in practically each and every sequence in the movie, with the bunch of fives in the ring and verbals outside. That such a movie can be made – and that it’s so universally admired – suggests there is enough common grace in the world for audiences and film critics to recognize the ghastliness of self-destruction (at least on the silver screen). His downfall – the overall plot of Raging Bull based on his real-life – is a simple ramification of being a hurtful human being, not an abject deformity in an otherwise estimable character. Jake LaMotta is petty, obsessed, envious, incredulous, evil, insecure, vicious, and ungrateful. If tragedy is the tale of a virtuous personage who is brought to naught by a single inadequacy, Raging Bull is not a tragedy at all. You may not think these are things illustrious art is made up of, but in the hands of the master, Martin Scorsese, and an equally adept screenwriter, Paul Schrader – almost any subject may be executed with fierce precision. LaMotta was arrested in 1958 for allowing a minor to enter one of his discotheques. ![]() He won the middleweight championship in 1950 and lost it in 1951. Jake LaMotta was a middleweight boxer in the ‘40s and ’50s.
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