“Raging Bull“ shows the true story of a Bronx boxer who rises and falls both inside and outside the ring. In typical Scorsese fashion, it contained 114 uses of the word “fuck”, according to imdb.com, and it tended to leave little to the imagination. He made an interesting choice by making 95% of the film black and white. The other 5% was a color 8mm camera that was meant to resemble home movies. The black and white gave it a different feel from some of the other boxing movies around that time, such as “Rocky”. It dampens the crudeness of the fighting to some extent as well. A lot of the blood and gore, which supposedly was done with Hershey’s chocolate, feels a little bit less intense in black and white.
One of the most interesting things I read about the film was how passionate De Nero was about making it. It was he who talked Scorsese into making the film, and De Nero played a big role in its production outside of his Oscar winning performance. He wanted to tell La Motta’s story to the world, and Scorsese helped him pull it off.
