STACK #259 May 2026

MOVIE FEATURE

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From the brink of collapse to cinematic immortality, Raging Bull is the film that saved Martin Scorsese and redefined what a sports movie could be. Words Bob J

actor to play Joey LaMotta. Although Pesci was older than De Niro, his reading of the script convinced both De Niro and Scorsese that Joe Pesci was ideal for the young brother role. Scorsese's decision to shoot the film in monochrome (a rarity then in modern-day filming) came from a sentence in La Motta's biography: "When I think back I feel like I'm looking at myself in an old black & white movie." Ingeniously fabricated by Scorsese, he brilliantly used various camera zooms, low-angle shots, slow motion, and close-ups which made the boxers' blood look like black ink (he borrowed Hitchcock's idea in Psycho by using chocolate syrup for the blood effects). As the production moved forward, Scorsese gradually got his movie mojo confidence back and found complete redemption toward the end of the project. Production actually closed down for several months so that De Niro, playing the ageing La Motta, could go on a binge eating spree in order to increase his weight by 60 pounds. The intensity of De Niro is remarkable as he becomes almost unrecognisable as the bloated ex-boxer. Furthermore, his overall performance is a perfect analysis of one man's aggression and insecurity who found it impossible to control his intense rage and brutality outside of the ring. It stands as the most striking achievement of De Niro's remarkable career that deservedly won him a 'Best Actor' Oscar.

(Above) Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro (Below) Director Martin Scorsese on set

T he embarrassing box office failure of his movie New York, New York (1977) left director Martin Scorsese totally devastated. Some weeks later, he collapsed from a mixture of prescription drugs and sheer exhaustion. Returning to New York, he was taken to hospital, bleeding from his mouth, his nose, and his eyes. The doctors told him he was in imminent danger of a brain haemorrhage and pumped him full of cortisone and ordered total bed rest. His good friend, actor Robert De Niro, visited him at the hospital and bluntly

firmly believing that his film career was now practically over anyway, eventually agreed to direct the movie, basically just for De Niro. However, the

production that the Scorsese/De Niro tandem delivered is

now seen as an unforgettable masterpiece of cinema and furthermore has been voted by American movie critics to be the greatest film of the 1980s. A fully recovered Scorsese would tell his friends and colleagues that, without doubt, De Niro had saved his life. script, then later Paul Schrader ( Taxi Driver ) wrote a second draft that both De Niro and Scorsese approved of. The film chronicles the rise and fall of Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), a middleweight boxing legend during the 1940s and '50s, whose bouts with Sugar Ray Robinson put him at both the top and bottom of his game. Throughout the film, LaMotta is Scorsese's old film school friend Mardik Martin ( Mean Streets ) worked on the

FUN FACT:

Martin Scorsese has a brief cameo as a stage manager

informing LaMotta (De Niro) of the showtime.

depicted as a man of excessive rage and furious jealousy stirred by both his wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) and younger brother Joey. Numerous actors were considered for the role of Joey but

told him to snap out of his misery and direct a movie about the boxing champion

Martin Scorsese's father Charles played one of the mob wise guys crowding the La Motta brothers at a Copa nightclub table. DYK?

Jake LaMotta, nicknamed the Bronx Bull. De Niro had pestered the director umpteen times to read LaMotta's book titled

none of them seemed to fit the character. Then, by chance, De Niro noticed the then little-known actor Joe Pesci on a late-night television mob drama titled The Death Collector and suggested to Scorsese that this just might be the right

Raging Bull , but Scorsese had always refused, due to having no interest whatsoever in sports movies. But because of De Niro's bullying persistence, Scorsese,

26 MAY 2026

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