Given this, Raging Bull has often been hailed as Scorsese’s most personal work that encapsulates his career-long critique of unchecked masculinity, seen elsewhere in his many films about gangsters or corrupt systems of male power. Although LaMotta could not be called redeemed by the final frames, the Biblical quote at the end credits, “Once I was blind, and now I see,” represents the filmmaker’s redemption after a severe personal and professional downswing. In Scorsese’s portrait of LaMotta’s externalization of his inner conflict, the director captures recurrent themes that appear throughout his body of work in their most crystallized form. The film also became a personal statement from the filmmaker. A passion project for the actor, De Niro’s LaMotta weighs his masculine instincts against his Christian guilt and finds the only way to release the inevitable conflict is through unrelenting violence, in or outside the ring.

The character comes to life through Robert De Niro’s greatest performance, a legendary bodily transformation only matched by the psychological complexity on display. Middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta, driven by aggression, jealousy, sexual repression, and self-hatred, becomes a text for Scorsese to critique masculinity and masculine violence.

Martin Scorsese composes an artful examination of a brutal subject in Raging Bull. ( This essay was originally published on June 29, 2009.

Cathy moriarty raging bull