DeNiro Takes It All

Rating: 10/10 (5 August 2015)

Hitchcock had little respect for actors. I bet he never met Robert DeNiro. This is his magnum opus. Martin Scorsese tells the story of Jake LaMotta, a man who could be a bum and his ability to overcome his lack of talent with gut-wrenching drive to fight his way to the top. In addition to DeNiro's benchmark acting performance, this film has some of the most outstanding cinematography that has ever been seen. The fight scenes are like ballet; for example, using the Air on a G String as the two fighters pummel one another. This is true genius. We get to see the humanity of LaMotta, a complex, somewhat violent man, carefully configured before our eyes. The use of black and white also gives us a sense of the 1940's boxing movies and then steps them up for us. There is a kind of starkness that never detracts from the endgame.