Cinematography in Raging Bull - Martin Scorsese (1980)

           

Master director Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull was released in 1980.  It focuses on the life of the famous middle weight boxer Jake LaMotta, who is known to have had abusive tendencies, masochistic rage, paranoid jealousy directed towards his wife, and problems with overindulgence in a range of vices. The movie starred Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta, Joe Pesci as Joey Lamotta, Cathy Moriarty as Vickie LaMotta, and Frank Vincent as Salvy (Scorsese would come to work with nearly all of these actors on many of his future films such as Goodfellas and Casino). Although it was met with only minor success upon its original release, Raging Bull is now considered to be one of the greatest films of all time.

            Arguably one of the best aspects of Raging Bull was its unique cinematography. The Director Of Photography, Michael Chapman, and Martin Scorsese made a number of decisions about how to film the movie that greatly affected it’s look and feel. This is apparent from even the first scene in which LaMotta is preparing for a fight alone in a smoky boxing ring. This scene was shot in slow motion while using wide- angle lens to enlarge the apparent size of the boxing ring and also using closed frame composition. The use of these techniques allows the viewers to notice that LaMotta is completely alone. This ends up applying to both inside and outside of the ring.

            The many fight scenes that we see throughout the film are also very interesting. In the 1970’s and before, most fight scenes were shot from the perspective of the spectators in the crowd. In Raging Bull, in order to make the film seem more realistic, Scorsese demanded that the fights be shot from the perspective of the boxers in the ring using Point of View shots. This allows viewers to see the expressions on the faces of the competitors. To accentuate the blood and sweat that would fly off the boxers in a  given match, the DOP effectively used backlighting. Rapid cuts were made throughout many of the fight scenes to portray the intensity and pace of the matches.

            Scorsese also decided to shoot the film in mostly Black and White to convey a sense of realism. It also conveys the emptiness of LaMotta’s life by the end of the film. The sudden switch to color when the LaMotta family’s mock home videos were shown in which they were all happy , is supposed to indicate to the viewer that their happiness is unrealistic and just a faced.