A symbolic masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (1 April 2002)

Though Raging Bull was based on a real-life story, like a true auteur, Scorsese shaped this film and made it his own through symbolism. The title signifies an uncontrollable rage inside the ring, which spills over into LaMotta's personal life, alienating those closest to him. The boxing arena only serves as a background for in-depth character development. The real engine that drives the movie is his jealous obsession with his wife, and fear of her sexuality. The use of fog, fluids, and LaMotta's refusal to fall in the ring expose his character, and his ultimate downfall.
Scorsese introduces the fog motif in the very first shot of the film. The viewer has an objective perspective of the fog that surrounds LaMotta in his career and in his mind. When LaMotta is in the ring, the crowds are obliterated, and the only sign of them is when flashbulbs go off. When he is in the sauna sweating off the necessary four pounds, he is again surrounded by fog. The fog associated with his boxing career symbolically and visually establishes LaMotta as a very isolated individual, who does not have a grasp on reality or relate to people well. He leads an egocentric life based on his own thoughts and suspicions. His judgment becomes clouded by his paranoid fears that his wife is sleeping with other men, until he eventually believes that his brother has slept with her. In the last fight scene when he loses his middleweight title, the crowd is no longer clouded. When the judges and his wife are splattered with LaMotta's blood, the camera is in very sharp focus. This scene is followed very quickly with LaMotta's retirement as an overweight loser, the loss of his wife and children and his jail time. The fog has similarly cleared in his mind as he realizes his mistakes. He screams, `Why? Why? Why?' in his jail cell, and later apologizes to his brother, admitting that he was a bum. Scorsese links the end if the film to the beginning as LaMotta smokes a cigar and self-induced fog covers his face. He knows his downfall was his own doing.
The use of fluids also links LaMotta's experience in the boxing ring to his fear of his wife's sexuality. Close ups of sweat pouring off his face emphasizes physical exertions as a substitute for sexual relations, as Vickie constantly complains that he is too busy fighting to have sex with her. The first time he sees Vickie in the pool, she is linked to a large body of pure water. After their first sexual encounter, he calms himself down with ice water. Gradually, the fluid symbol begins to transform. After he loses his first fight with Sugar Ray, the water in the bucket, with a close up of his fist, signifies his increasing anger and rage. About that time, he starts to suspect Vickie of having sex with other men. The water squeezed on him in between rounds no longer purifies him physically or symbolically, because he is becoming mentally disturbed. The water sponged on him in his last fight with Sugar Ray, at the beginning of his decline, is red from blood. He is tainted by his obsession, as is his wife when she is sprayed with his blood. Scorsese again links the elder LaMotta with his youthful boxing self by having him drink water before he goes out to recite. He is symbolically pure now that he knows his past mistakes.
To LaMotta, the true sign of a man is his ability to remain standing. Scorsese consistently shows weakness lying or sitting down, and strength, power and control standing up. LaMotta stands to have his brother Joey punch him in the face. He refuses to fall when the mob tells him he has to take a fall. He knocks Sugar Ray down twice, and prides himself even after he loses the middleweight crown that Ray never knocked him down. However, while he sits in between the rounds, his brother/manager yells at him. When he sits down after the lost match with Sugar Ray, he cries, showing his weakness. He is sitting when he hangs up the phone on his brother without apologizing, and when he is in the jail cell at the time of his ultimate downfall, having lost his title and his belt in order to post bail. This pattern of domination and control only while standing extends outside of the ring to LaMotta's relationship with Vickie. He stands behind his wife, pulling her hair or slapping her. He dominates her with violence the way he would in the ring, but he is powerless on his back or sitting, demonstrating his fear of sexuality. He has to stand up to regain some control after their first encounter laying on his back, saying `What are you doing to me?' He knows that she has the real control. The first time LaMotta sees Vickie, she towers over him on the other side of the fence. She dwarfs him sitting on his lap. Scorsese shoots her going up stairs or in extreme close ups and LaMotta farther away so he seems smaller than she does. Since he feels so inferior, he resorts to violence to feel that he has control over her. Because he refused to fall in the ring, LaMotta was bound to fall outside of the ring. Fall he did, and he became a sad, pathetic, broke, lonely, overweight man.