The Bronx Bull: I am Jake

Every time I think I know what my next few posts are going to be something comes out of nowhere and takes over this most fickle and obsession prone mind.
I went to a screening of Raging Bull Monday night. I've seen this movie many times because I'm a huge, huge Scorsese mark, but the fire this time affected me differently. I focused on different things, saw different connections etc.
I usually just get lost in the stunning black and white, the phenomenal editing, De Niro's soul-scraping performance, but this time I really started to think about who Jake LaMotta was and why De Niro felt so connected to him. I know they became close after filming began because LaMotta worked closely with De Niro to choreograph the boxing scenes to ensure their authenticity and intensity; but even before that De Niro felt a strong bond with him.
There's a famous anecdote recounted by Peter Biskind in his classic slice of cinematic history Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, where Scorsese and De Niro are meeting with studio bigwigs and one finally expresses his exasperation and dismay with the ugly, bleak characterization of Jake LaMotta, the two were pitching, by referring to him as a "Cockroach."
After this epithet was uttered-

"A suffocating silence fell over the room like a blanket. De Niro, in jeans and bare feet, slumped in an easy chair, had said nothing. He roused himself, and said quietly but distinctly, 'He is not a cockroach...He is not a cockroach.'" Biskind p.390

On the surface, though, the movie they made makes it hard to disagree with the baffled exec.
I know through interviews that Scorsese didn't feel any connection to LaMotta until years of coke benders, coupled with severe asthma, almost cost him his life in 1978.
Biskind drives that point home, rather dramatically, while depicting De Niro's visit to a hospital bedridden Scorsese urging him to make Raging Bull once and for all:

"'Are we doing it or not?' Scorsese replied, 'Yes.' He had finally found the hook: the self-destructiveness, the wanton damage to the people around him, just for its own sake. He thought: I am Jake." Biskind p. 387

This angle of Scorsese's personal connection to La Motta was emphatically driven home Monday night.
The connection works on a few different levels. I remember reading a library book on Irish and Italian Filmmakers years back that had a great section on Scorsese that has always stuck with me. I think it's this one, but I can't be 100% sure....at any rate Scorsese tells the author how he remembers reading that St. Francis of Assisi said or wrote somewhere that animals were closer to God than human beings because they act purely on instinct (designed and bestowed upon them by god) with no consciousness to evaluate, restrain or interfere with their actions, thus according them a level of purity denied to human beings. I believe that this is something else Scorsese saw in La Motta: someone acting purely on instinct and basically unable to act any other way. The curious paradox here is that even though Scorsese seems to locate that pure animal instinct in LaMotta as an explanation (I'm not ready to say justification) of his actions, he pointedly has the character, at absolute rock bottom in a jail cell, insist that he is NOT an animal. An interesting contradiction, but these types of contradictions are what create the tension inherent in great characters. The other level of Scorsese's connection to Jake that works is in the idea of Jake taking these horrible beatings in the ring to act as penance for his sins and the damage he has caused. This has resonated with me because it connects with a core, purely Catholic, tenet of Scorsese's aesthetic best articulated by Charlie (the director's thinly disguised alter ego) in Mean Streets that: you don't do penance in church saying Hail Marys...that's not good, or real, enough...you do your penance in the streets, in the world by your actions. Jake (through Scorsese) seems to adhere to this belief just as strongly as Charlie, and his way of achieving real penance is absorbing punishment in the ring. To further reinforce these connections and themes reverberating throughout Scorsese's ouevre remember that one of Charlie's heroes is: St. Francis of Assisi. I found out through IMDB that being unsure of exactly how to shoot and edit the pivotal sequence of the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" where Jake idly absorbs an unbelievably brutal beating from Sugar Ray Robinson, Scorsese obtained a shot list of the shower scene in Psycho and used that as a blueprint. The scene takes place right after Jake beats up his brother and wife, so the connection of it being Jake's penance is made pretty explicit, but for the first time I looked at it as Scorsese's own bloodletting, which might explain the extreme violence, yet also Jake's defiant, wobbly insistence to Ray that he never went down. This is, I believe, Scorsese's vicarious self-flagellation and penance. Precursors of this masochistic self-flagellation can be detected in Scorsese's "Big Shave" documentary, even though the underlying message of the film was political not personal. I also, for the first time, saw Scorsese as Jake in his dealings with Mob boss, Tommy Como. I equated Como with the studio system telling Jake that no matter how stubbornly he insists on doing things his way, he can't/won't achieve his potential without giving them what they want. Jake has to take a dive and the scene afterwards where he just cries abjectly into his managers shoulder has always been the most brutal scene in the movie.

As a filmmaker working within the system even during the so-called "era of the director" that Biskind writes about, Scorsese has to make humiliating commercial concessions etc. to get the chance to make the movies he really wants. Much like Jake having to take a dive against Billy Fox before getting a much-deserved title shot.

Scorsese says not to read too much into the use of the “I could've been a contender" speech from On the Waterfront for various reasons. But I have to wonder is that him lashing out at the studio system? Biskind contends that deep-down, and maybe overtly at times, Scorsese wanted success and acceptance on the level of Lucas/Spielberg. Or is he lashing out at himself. He has said many times that he legitimately thought Raging Bull would be his last film. Is this him reflecting on wasted, squandered potential?

A lot of new things to think about.

I still feel that the beauty of the photography is the ultimate paradox and the true key to this film's legacy and impact. The beauty lulls you into a sense of security that calms and disarms you so that the explosions of violence are that much more stark, surprising and sad.