7/19/2023 0 Comments Raging bull jakeThe gradual decline of boxing to the status of niche sport has pushed that era almost beyond our ability to recover it. He fought when boxing was still a central feature not just of the sporting scene but of industrial-era American culture, intertwined with the routines of manufacturing work and deeply embedded in the textures of neighborhood life via the gym, saloon and union hall. It also makes it harder for us to get at the historical dirt attached to the roots of that character: the world that shaped LaMotta, and the knowledge that flowed through it. But the movie character’s supplanting of the historical LaMotta - a process in which he cooperated - doesn’t just make it harder to give him his due as a boxer. There’s no point in complaining that “Raging Bull” alters its subject in the name of spectacle and storytelling. A swarming attacker who wore down and outpointed opponents with volume of punches, he also gulled them with tactical retreats that tempted them into overextending themselves. Rather than a rage-blind punch eater, he was a cagey pressure fighter who expertly rolled with most of the blows that the movie depicts him as masochistically taking flush on the chin. The glutton for punishment depicted in the movie and almost every obituary is a highly stylized take on Jake LaMotta the boxer, who was not only strong and resilient but also a skilled craftsman. The character has so eclipsed the man that by now it’s hard to see around De Niro’s LaMotta to the guy who died on September 19. That’s the year of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” starring Robert De Niro as LaMotta, a celebrated performance that set a new standard for a male actor’s immersion in a character. The passing at the age of 95 of Jake LaMotta, who held the world middleweight title from 1949 to 1951, has set off a wave of nostalgia for. It’s like “ rocket summer,” the wash of snow-melting heat that passes over a wintry Ohio town when spaceships lift off in Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles.” The more famous the champion, the more potent the wave. When a champion dies, a wave of nostalgia for his era rolls over the culture.
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