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LXXVIII: Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
At some point in the late 1980s Channel 4 had a Robert De Niro season, featuring Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas and Once Upon a Time in America, no doubt among others. Some of them I watched, some of them I taped, some of them I taped and watched. I never got round to Raging Bull for reasons that escape me. Today's excuse: The Top 100.
This is one of those powerhouse De Niro performances, a biopic of mid-twentieth century box Jake La Motta: old and fat and damaged, preparing for a personal appearance, and then twenty-something, becoming a champion. Scorsese takes us right in the ring, into the fight, seeing the punches connect (a triumph of Schoonmaker's editing as well as De Niro's masochism). There seems to be little more to his life than boxing - an early girlfriend abandoned, a teenaged girl taken up and owned and eventually leaves him - a couple of clubs, and that's it.
I guess, though, there is the relationship with his younger brother - and Joe Pesci steals every scene he's in, as he was to in GoodFellas and Casino, with his free wheeling searing, and the sense of violence about to break out, indeed sometimes breaking out. Are these scenes improvised? They feel like it. Certainly Scorsese and De Niro mark their mark on the script.
The big artistic decision is to film in black and white - although some of the early graphics are in red, and the home movie footage is in colour. As always it helps us believe that we are in the 1940s and 1950s, aided by the use of time specific music.
LXXIX: The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1983)
Scorsese ends Raging Bull with a dedication to a mentor and the assumption that it would be his last movie (due to cocaine usage). However, it marked a creative regeneration and he followed it up with another De Niro performance, one which looks back to Taxi Driver.
The constantly misnamed Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) is a bit of a Walter Mitty character, convinced he will be a great comedian and all but stalking Johnny Carson-like chatshow host Jerry Langford (a cast against type Jerry Lewis) in his ambition. Rescuing Langford from a stalker (Masha (Sandra Bernhard)), Pupkin thinks he has an in with Langford and so tries to get an audition tape to him. When this fails, he teams up with Masha to kidnap him.
There's always the sense that he will go Travis Bickle, although De Niro uses his slightly simple but likeable persona he reserves for his rare comedies. Bernhard, on the other hand, always plays hysteric - see Hudson Hawk (1991), say - but this was her breakthrough from the Comedy Store and The Richard Prior Show. More problematically we have to decide whether the comedy is meant to be funny or not - he gets some laughs, but are they enough?
The ending - again - feels like Taxi Driver. Whereas you are led in that case to expect a disaster, instead Bickle is hailed as a hero in a sequence which stretches credibility and therefore is either an attack on contemporary (mid-1970s) society or needs to be read as wish fulfillment. The ending of King either critiques the way in which we choose who is to be famous, or again is a fantasy (we've already seen a section in which Pupkin imagines having dinner with Langford and there's a faked chatshow set in his basement room). In the end it is impossible to tell.
Totals: 79 (Cinema: 28; DVD: 47; TV: 4)
At some point in the late 1980s Channel 4 had a Robert De Niro season, featuring Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas and Once Upon a Time in America, no doubt among others. Some of them I watched, some of them I taped, some of them I taped and watched. I never got round to Raging Bull for reasons that escape me. Today's excuse: The Top 100.
This is one of those powerhouse De Niro performances, a biopic of mid-twentieth century box Jake La Motta: old and fat and damaged, preparing for a personal appearance, and then twenty-something, becoming a champion. Scorsese takes us right in the ring, into the fight, seeing the punches connect (a triumph of Schoonmaker's editing as well as De Niro's masochism). There seems to be little more to his life than boxing - an early girlfriend abandoned, a teenaged girl taken up and owned and eventually leaves him - a couple of clubs, and that's it.
I guess, though, there is the relationship with his younger brother - and Joe Pesci steals every scene he's in, as he was to in GoodFellas and Casino, with his free wheeling searing, and the sense of violence about to break out, indeed sometimes breaking out. Are these scenes improvised? They feel like it. Certainly Scorsese and De Niro mark their mark on the script.
The big artistic decision is to film in black and white - although some of the early graphics are in red, and the home movie footage is in colour. As always it helps us believe that we are in the 1940s and 1950s, aided by the use of time specific music.
LXXIX: The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1983)
Scorsese ends Raging Bull with a dedication to a mentor and the assumption that it would be his last movie (due to cocaine usage). However, it marked a creative regeneration and he followed it up with another De Niro performance, one which looks back to Taxi Driver.
The constantly misnamed Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) is a bit of a Walter Mitty character, convinced he will be a great comedian and all but stalking Johnny Carson-like chatshow host Jerry Langford (a cast against type Jerry Lewis) in his ambition. Rescuing Langford from a stalker (Masha (Sandra Bernhard)), Pupkin thinks he has an in with Langford and so tries to get an audition tape to him. When this fails, he teams up with Masha to kidnap him.
There's always the sense that he will go Travis Bickle, although De Niro uses his slightly simple but likeable persona he reserves for his rare comedies. Bernhard, on the other hand, always plays hysteric - see Hudson Hawk (1991), say - but this was her breakthrough from the Comedy Store and The Richard Prior Show. More problematically we have to decide whether the comedy is meant to be funny or not - he gets some laughs, but are they enough?
The ending - again - feels like Taxi Driver. Whereas you are led in that case to expect a disaster, instead Bickle is hailed as a hero in a sequence which stretches credibility and therefore is either an attack on contemporary (mid-1970s) society or needs to be read as wish fulfillment. The ending of King either critiques the way in which we choose who is to be famous, or again is a fantasy (we've already seen a section in which Pupkin imagines having dinner with Langford and there's a faked chatshow set in his basement room). In the end it is impossible to tell.
Totals: 79 (Cinema: 28; DVD: 47; TV: 4)
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