I own the DVDs of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Casino, and The Wolf of Wall Street; my friend Drew and I like to quote from Matthew McConaguhey’s character in the latter (“it’s a fugazi!”). I’m sure the number of my viewings of each flick is in the double digits at this point.
So it’s ironic that I’d only seen Raging Bull once, when I was a movie-obsessed fifteen-year old become acquainted with the great directors. As I wound down a busy workweek this past Friday, I came across it on Prime, and I thought, why not.
Roger Ebert described the film as a perfect illustration of Freud’s concept of the Madonna-whore complex, the idea that a man will idealize a woman until she sleeps with him, at which point he loses respect for the woman.
Scorsese’s picture of Jake LaMotta, the titularesque boxer in the film, is a perfect illustration of this idea. Robert DeNiro deservedly won the Oscar for his portrayal of LaMotta. At the beginning of the movie, he has a fairly tumultuous relationship with his wife, whom he throws over for Vickie, a fifteen-year-old he eyes at a swimming pool. The way she’s portrayed in this scene is almost angelic, similar to the first time Sam Rothstein from Casino (another Robert DeNiro portrayal) looks at Sharon Stone’s Ginger. Another similarity: Jordan Belfort’s gaze upon Naomi LaPaglia in Wolf.
Of course, both marriages self-destruct, as does that of Jake and Vickie. Jake’s a championship boxer, but he keeps obsessing over the idea that Vickie may be cheating on him, and he continues to harangue her. This obsession causes him to get sloppy in the ring, hit his wife, and alienate his brother (an early role by Joe Pesci).
True to Scorsese form, the last forty-five minutes are a kick in the gut. After public and private fights with Vickie, she finally leaves him, calling him a “fat pig.” Right before this, he emcees a comedy club. During one of his acts, he brags about being married for eleven years (and to the audience’s applause, of course). He then has a bit about how a married guy talks down to a single guy. The married guy talks about all the benefits of having a wife, and says, “You should try that.” The single guy responds, “That sounds great! When does she get home?”
In the next scene, he commits the act of “corrupting a girl’s morals” by introducing a fourteen-year-old to a bunch of men, for which he serves a few months in prison. The last shot, Jake’s recitation of Marlon Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” monologue from On the Waterfront. The connection between the two characters is transparent but real. While Scorsese has been married for twenty-seven years, he doesn’t appear to hold it in the same esteem as a lot of other filmmakers do. Raging Bull is a perfect example.