Visual Absurdity in Raging Bull

Abstract

Visually, Raging Bull is almost an artistic fiasco. The film's visual style seems often on the point of falling to pieces. The last fight scene, for instance – in which Sugar Ray Robinson incessantly pummels an exhausted Jake La Motta – depicts images so ludicrous that it's a wonder that viewers can make sense of it. One shot bizarrely shows a punch from the perspective of Robinson's glove as it approaches La Motta's face. Seconds later, one of Robinson's blows causes liquid to spray out of La Motta's head, as though from a sprinkler, and splatter a crowd of onlookers with what looks like a bucket-load of blood. At one point Robinson winds up for a punch in a ridiculously awkward stance, his arm and shoulder stretched in the air behind him, standing like a third-grader pretending to be a fighter: The shot appears more strange because of slow-motion cinematography and the curious emergence of smoke surrounding Robinson's body. Such absurd and implausible images permeate the film, especially its fight sequences. In the pages that follow, I shall set about demonstrating that Raging Bull 's visual incoherence and intermittent absurdity are integral to its success as a film and one of the primary reasons that critics and audiences find the film so compelling. Before I do, however, I want to illustrate director Martin Scorsese's commitment to the film by discussing the care with which he constructed its eccentric visual style.

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