Jake LaMotta – Raging Bull

Giacobbe LaMotta (born July 10, 1921), better known as Jake LaMotta, nicknamed “The Bronx Bull” and “The Raging Bull”, is an American former world middleweight champion boxer who was famously portrayed by Robert De Niro in the film Raging Bull.

LaMotta, who compiled a record of 83 wins, 19 losses and four draws, was the first man to beat the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson, considered by many to be the greatest pound-for-pound boxer ever. LaMotta knocked him down in the first round of their first fight and then outpointed him over the course of 10 rounds during the second fight of their legendary six-bout rivalry. After retirement, LaMotta owned and managed bars, and became a stage actor and stand-up comedian. He appeared in more than 15 films, including ‘The Hustler’ with Paul Newman, in which he had a cameo role as a bartender.

Robert De Niro read LaMotta’s 1970 memoir, ‘Raging Bull: My Story. DeNiro became fascinated by the character of LaMotta when he showed the book to Martin Scorsese on the set of ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ (1974) as a means to hopefully consider the project. Scorsese repeatedly turned down DeNiro offers to take the director’s chair; then after nearly dying from a drug overdose, Scorsese agreed to make the film for De Niro’s sake, not only to save his own life but also to save what remained of his career. Scorsese knew that he could relate to the story of Jake LaMotta as a way to redeem himself; he saw the role being portrayed as an everyman for whom “the ring becomes an allegory of life,” making the project a very personal one for him.

The film, ‘Raging Bull’ (1980), was initially only a minor box office success, but eventually became a huge critical success both for director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert DeNiro, who famously gained about 60 pounds (27 kg) during the shooting of the film to play the older LaMotta in later scenes. The film depicts a violent and self-destructive LaMotta, who once goes as far as beating his own brother, manager Joey LaMotta Joe Pesci), while accusing him of having an affair with his (Jake’s) then wife, Vickie LaMotta (Cathy Moriarthy). In real life, this altercation was between LaMotta and his best friend Pete, not his brother Joey. The Joey character in the film is an amalgamation to simplify the narrative.

To accurately portray the younger LaMotta, De Niro trained with LaMotta until LaMotta felt he was ready to box professionally. The actor found that boxing came naturally to him; he entered as a middleweight boxer, winning two of his three fights in a Brooklyn ring dubbed “young LaMotta” by the commentator. According to Jake LaMotta, he felt that De Niro was one of his top 20 best middleweight boxers of all time.

De Niro then moved to Paris for three months, eating at the finest restaurants in order to gain sufficient weight to portray LaMotta after retirement. He said after that prothestics “never get the neck right” as his main reason for gaining the weight. De Niro won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

It was the first Scorsese/De Niro movie I’d ever seen on the big screen, at my college, it blew me away… topped only by seeing ‘Taxi Driver’ a few weeks later. What an exceptional intorduction to these guys work! The film is all De Niro, it’s impossible to take your eyes off him and he commands every scene he’s in. The rest of the cast are all exceptional, Joe Pesci in his first major role, Cathy Moriarty in her debut (what a wasted career she’s had since) and Frank Vincent. By the end of the 1980s, Raging Bull had cemented its reputation as a modern classic. It was voted the best film of the 1980s in numerous critics’ polls and is regularly pointed to as both Scorsese’s best film and one of the finest American movies ever made.