Raging Bull on Blu-ray

Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, the 1980 biopic about Bronx’s tinderbox pugilist Jake LaMotta, is no stranger to acclaim, and for good reason: Robert De Niro’s incendiary portrait of an unleashed male psyche in all its id-driven fury is as blistering now as it was nearly 30 years ago.

But is it a must-own on Blu-ray? Yes and no.

At the risk of getting pummeled by cinematographer Michael Chapman, consider the facts. Pelham Parkway is gritty, grainy, raw. So is Chapman’s image—plain, simple, flat. But in the boxing ring, suddenly the frame comes alive. Cigar smoke and high-wattage floodlights fill the air with swirling, luscious plumes, the dust and sweat glittering and dancing in the ether. Taut tendons flex, torsos bob and weave, fists fly into jaws with juicy bursts of saliva and blood spurting. It’d be stomach-churning if it weren’t so entrancing.

The genius of the movie’s cinematography is its marriage of Scorsese’s two favorite aesthetics: Italian Neorealism and classic Hollywood glitz. LaMotta’s wife yells at him about his steak, and she might as well be Anna Magnani. LaMotta and his brother go to a nightclub, and suddenly the location is as glamorous as Casablanca. It’s supple one minute and coarse the next.

Blu-ray makes this dichotomy only more extreme, which is why for half the time it doesn’t matter whether you’re watching a DVD or even a VHS. In fact, the scenes of Jake’s backstage monologuing work even better if the image is distressed and muddy—the seediness makes it even more tragic. And what better way to show LaMotta’s penchant for wife-beating than as a grimy, horrific vision? The last thing those body blows need is to be bathed in beauty.

No American filmmaker is a more impeccable craftsman than Scorsese, so watching a pristine copy of Raging Bull is an honor. And Blu-ray’s technological fidelity reveals every loving visual nuance. But the director always exploits every cinematic tool with such affection—editing, sound design, screenwriting, acting, production design, costume, music—that his work is a revelation even when it’s not shown with the pure visual clarity of HD.

Look at the Blu-ray of Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed. Michael Ballhaus’s cinematography is sharp and detailed, even operatic at times, but the virtuosity of Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing and William Monahan’s writing, and the performance of the entire star-laden cast, is breathtaking. You want pretty? Watch the Blu-ray of Shine a Light to see Scorsese’s appreciation of mixed-media film stocks and staged lighting design. It’s an empty, showboating movie (light-years from the elegiac beauty of Scorsese’s The Last Waltz) but it sure is pretty.

Then again, Jake LaMotta never cared much for pretty things. Just ask that handsome middleweight who caught his wife’s eye—he ain’t pretty no more.

Next week: Does The Passion of the Christ compel us?

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