Summary
Two Years Later Detroit June 15, 1949. Jake, Vickie, Joey, and Jake’s trainer stay at the Brook-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. Jake is preparing to fight the French middleweight title holder, Marcel Cerdan, but rain delays the fight for twenty-four hours. Restless and irritable, Jake begins to pace around the hotel room. Joey orders food over the phone and asks what Vickie wants; after she says, “Give me a piece of cake,” Joey suggests that she order a cheeseburger. Vickie takes Joey’s suggestion, and Jake gets jealous over Joey’s influence on her.
Tommy visits the LaMotta rooms and wishes Jake good luck. When Tommy begins to leave, Vickie kisses him goodbye on the cheek. Perceived in slow-motion, Tommy gives Vickie another kiss and compliments her—“Look at that beauty. Just as beautiful as ever!” Tommy leaves, and Jake is furious. Jake pulls Vickie aside and demands that she stop acting so friendly toward Vickie. Vickie attempts to walk away from Jake, but he strikes her in the face. Jake sternly tells her, “You don’t ever have any disrespect for me,” and Joey intervenes and tells Jake to stop. In response, Jake yells, “Shut up! Shut up! I’ll fucking take care of you later. Shut up! I’m disgusted with the two of you.” Joey looks hurt.
We immediately cut to the final minutes before Jake’s fight with Cerdan. Jake pounds his fists against a rubber mat while declaring, “boss, boss, boss!” in the locker room. In a single steadicam shot, we follow Jack and Joey as they move backstage from the corridor, to the crowd, to the ring.
LaMotta vs. Middleweight Champion Marcel Cerdan Detroit 1949. We see snippets of a determined Jake beat Marcel; at the start of the tenth round, a technical knockout is declared. Jake walks over to Cerdan and hugs him. As fight officials put Jake’s title belt on, flashbulbs clink and the crowd cheers.
Pelham Parkway New York 1950. In yet another abrupt cut, we see an overweight Jake attempt to fix his television. After running some errands and visiting her sister, Vickie enters the house and kisses both Jake and Joey. After she goes upstairs, Jack chastises Joey for kissing his wife on the lips—“What’s the matter with you? What’s with this kissing on the mouth? … Ain’t her cheek good enough for you?...All of the sudden you’re like a Romeo.”
After Jake’s large stomach blocks Joey’s view of the TV, Joey taunts Jake’s weight and diet; Joey also argues that Jake has to defend his title next month, so he should eat more healthily. Jake then interrogates Joey about the fight he and Salvy had at the Copacabana in Part 3—an incident over two years old at this point. Joey claims he never gave Jake details about the night because it had nothing to do with him, but Jake ominously says he’s heard “some things.”
Jake asks if Salvy and Vickie had sex, and a repulsed Joey insists that he looked after Vickie during Jake’s absence, and his fight with Salvy had nothing to do with Vickie or Jake. Jake says he doesn’t trust or believe his own brother. Joey says he’s telling the truth, to which Jake replies, “I gotta accept your answer, you know. But I'm telling you now, if I hear anything, I swear on mother, I'm gonna kill somebody. I'm gonna kill somebody, Joey.” Furious, Joey rises to his feet and shouts, “Well, go ahead and kill everybody. You're the tough guy. Go kill people. Kill Vickie; kill Salvy; kill Tommy Como; kill me while you’re at it, what do I care? You’re killing yourself the way you eat; you’re a fat fuck. Look at ya.”
Using a dubious and delusional logic, Jake asks Joey, “Did you fuck my wife?” merely because Joey sarcastically included himself with Tommy and Salvy in the group of people Jake could kill. Insulted, Joey replies, “ How could you ask me a question like that? How could you ask me? I'm your brother. You ask me that? Where do you get your balls big enough to ask me that?” Jake pressures Joey to answer his question, but an insulted Joey refuses: “I'm not gonna answer. That's a sick question, you're a sick fuck, and I'm not that sick that I'm gonna answer it...You know what you should do—try a little more fucking and a little less eating. You won't have troubles upstairs in your bedroom and you won't take it out on me and everybody else. Do you understand, you fucking wacko? You're cracking up! Fucking screwball, ya.” Joey leaves Jake’s house in disgust.
Jake walks upstairs to confront Vickie, who’s making the bed. He strokes her hair and questions her about her day (Vickie says that she went to her sister’s house and saw Father of the Bride), but the conversation quickly turns to the night at the Copacabana. Vickie claims she doesn’t know what Jake is talking about, and Jake slaps her and asks, “Did you fuck my brother?” She breaks free from Jake’s grip and locks herself in the bathroom. Jake quickly knocks the door down and proceeds to beat Vickie, repeatedly asking her, “Why’d you do it?”
To offer Jake the masochistic, sexual relief he clearly desires, Vickie mock-confesses to sleeping with Tomy, Salvy, and Joey: “I fucked all of them! What do you want me to say?…I fucked all of them—Tommy, Salvy, your brother! All of them! I sucked your brother’s cock, what do you want me to say?...Yeah, I sucked his cock and everybody else on the fucking street, too. What do you want? You’re nothing but a fat pig, selfish fool!” Jake brutally strikes her and walks out of the bathroom. Vickie insults Jake one more time—“His [Joey’s] fucking cock is bigger than yours, too!” as he leaves for Joey’s house. Vickie follows behind him.
Before Jake barges into Joey’s house, we see Joey threatening his son: “If I see you put your hands in that plate one more time, I’m gonna stab you with this knife!” Jake attacks his brother, repeatedly asking him, “You fuck my wife?” Jake stomps on Joey and sends him through a glass door. Joey’s wife and Vickie attempt to break up the fight, but Jake punches Vickie and knocks her out. Jake exits his brother’s house; later, we see him staring at his static, broken television. Vickie returns home and begins to pack up her belongings. Jake begs for her to stay: “I’m a bum without you and the kids. Don’t go.” Vickie quickly forgives her husband, and they embrace at her dresser.
La Motta vs. Dauthuille Detroit 1950. A jump cut shows the close LaMotta-Dauthuille fight. Jake makes a comeback in the final thirteen seconds of the fifteenth round and wins the match, appearing to break Dauthuille’s jaw in the process.
After the fight, Vickie urges Jake to make amends with Joey, reasoning, “Tell him you’re sorry. You miss him. He’s your brother. You have to talk to him sooner or later.” Vickies dials the phone for Jake and tells him to apologize. Joey answers the phone, but Jake finds himself unable to speak. Without knowing that Jake’s on the other line, Joey spews insults toward the unidentified caller: “Salvy, this ain’t funny anymore. Is it you? I know somebody’s there. I can hear you breathing. You listening? Your mother sucks fucking big fucking elephant dicks. You got that?” Jake stays silent and looks defeated.
We then see an exhausted Jake in the ring. He’s attempting to defend his title against Sugar Ray Robinson in a televised fight. Jake’s trainer soaks his body with a bloody sponge, and his mouthpiece is offered like a communion wafer. Meanwhile, Joey and his wife watch the fight on TV.
In the thirteenth round, Jake is unable to continue fighting. He stands against the ropes helplessly, but nonetheless provokes Robinson to beat him to a pulp. Robinson attacks Jake with a series of endless punches; blood spurts of out Jake’s face and splatters on his legs and the audience. Through all of this, Jake, determined to never go down, remains standing. The referee stops the fight, and Sugar Ray becomes the new world middleweight champion.
A mangled Jake approaches Robinson in his corner and says, “Hey, Ray, I never went down. You never got me down, Ray. You never got me down.” As the ring announcer declares Robinson as the winner, the camera pans to a bloody rope inside the ring.
Analysis:
Throughout Raging Bull, Scorsese glosses over the successes in Jake’s lives. He devotes much of the screen-time to scenes of Jake’s troubling domestic life, rather than his triumphs in the ring. Most of Jake’s personal and professional high points are relegated to a three-minute montage in Part 2, with one slight yet notable exception: his earning of the middleweight championship title. For the final moments before the fight, Scorsese’s cinematic manipulation makes us feel as invigorated and elevated as Jake. As we follow him from backstage to the ring, the stadium tracking shot, the palpable and intoxicating roars of the crowd, and lush, romantic music combine to signify Jake’s forthcoming victory.
The sequence’s imagery evokes the film’s romanticized opening credits: Jake looks like a graceful, heroic figure. He bops up and down, makes boxing gestures with his hands, and sports his lavish leopard robe. Unlike the opening credits though, he’s not a lone boxer—he’s surrounded by thousands of cheering, adoring fans. In these brief moments, we can understand how boxing not only provides Jake a safe outlet for his violence and masochism, but a sense of prestige and importance. The cheers of the crowd validate Jake as a champion; they counteract Jake’s crippling insecurities, monolithic sexual jealousy, and self-inflicted paranoia. We are aware that Jake is an abhorrent man, destructive to himself and those closest to him. And yet, Scorsese allows us, however briefly, to root for him.
Predictably, we only see tiny segments of the title fight; the focus is less on the details of the fighting and more on Jake’s feelings of dominance, control, and victory. When he receives the belt, Scorsese cuts to Jake’s face in a slow motion shot, which amplifies the moment’s significance to his life. Here, Jake experiences such eternal bliss that time has the illusion of being slowed down.
After Jake wins the title—one of the highest points of his life—we immediately transition into Jake's vicious disputes with Vickie and Joey—one of the lowest points in his life. Scorsese utterly undercuts the thrill of Jake’s championship with one painful sequence: in the span of 10 minutes, a now overweight Jake drinks beer, attempts to fix a television, argues with Joey, argues with Vickie, savagely beats them both, and returns to his couch.
Jake’s turbulent paranoia about Vickie’s infidelity consumes his entire life. As critic Roger Ebert astutely noted, Jake has a Madonna/whore complex: “For LaMotta, women are unapproachable, virginal ideals—until they are sullied by physical contact (with him), after which they become suspect. During the film he tortures himself with fantasies that Vickie is cheating on him. Every word, every glance, is twisted by his scrutiny. He never catches her, but he beats her as if he had; his suspicion is proof of her guilt.” Indeed, Jake wants Vickie to be a perfect, anonymous, and virginal women, but he also desires her—and cannot reconcile these two opposing notions. Preoccupied with her beauty and allure, he fears he’s not sexually advanced enough to be with her, an insecurity which fuels his jealousy and culminates in him beating both Vickie and Joey.
In this sequence, Jake’s paranoia leads to outrageous accusations, a brutal thrash of jealous rage, and a permanently damaged relationship with his own brother. Jake convinces himself that Joey and Vickie are having an affair without any sound reasoning supporting this claim. When Jake pointedly asks Vickie, “Why did you fuck Joey?” Vickie intensifies her husband’s rage with a sarcastic, obtuse confirmation of his paranoia. She claims that she slept with Tommy, Salvy, and Joey and implies a sexual inadequacy in Jake: “You’re nothing but a fat pig selfish fool…[Joey’s] cock’s bigger than yours too!” This crude reference to Jake’s manhood parallels with Jake’s previous declarations of dissatisfaction with his body—particularly his “little girl’s hands.” Thus, even though Vickie is clearly being sarcastic, she exploits her husband’s male chauvinism and insecurities, enraging him. As we see earlier in the film, Jake cannot confront, process, or articulate his rage without resorting to violence. This illustrates why he savagely attacks his own wife and brother, an incident emblematic of the pervasive violence in Jake’s personal life. After his brawl with Joey and Vickie, Jake returns to his couch and stares at his TV, which is out of focus and out of frame. It’s an appropriate metaphor for Jake, whose own scrambled, inarticulate mind prevents him from clearly seeing and processing the world around him.
Jake’s final fight with Sugar Ray signifies not only the fall of his career, but the pinnacle of his self-loathing. In this fight, Jake receives all the punishment he (believes he) deserves for his attacks against Vickie and Joey. Likewise, out of all the film’s fight scenes, this match is the most expressive and surrealistic. The arena evokes Jake’s inner despair and terror; it is a dark, foggy place punctuated by distracting flashbulbs, stark streaks of blood and sweat, and loud, intensified punches. The sound mix blends animal roars, soaring winds, and airplane motors, and the backlighting transforms Sugar Ray into a menacing, god-like silhouette. As Jake awaits his punishment on the ropes, a POV dolly zoom (a.k.a. the "Vertigo effect") simultaneously zooms in and out of Robinson. In other words, the background of the ring stretches out into the distance, while Robinson appears to stay the same size—if not growing larger. The shot produces a disoriented feeling, putting the audience into Jake’s point of view as Robinson severely beats him.
This fight is essentially the sum of all of Jake’s sins. Its imagery, from the bloody sponge to Jake’s blood-splattered legs to Jake passively waiting on the rope, amplifies his willingness to endure severe pain from his opponent. Jake refuses to go down, and we understand why: he feels that he deserves to suffer, but still wants to uphold some control and dominance. Even though Jake is left mangled and defeated, he still views the fight as a prideful affirmation of his hyper-masculinity and resilience: “I never went down, Ray. You never got me down, Ray.” From an audience perspective, though, we view this as an unconvincing attempt of bravado, and we cannot help but pity Jake. For however much he hurts other people, he injures himself more. Jake can give or take abuse, and his inarticulate rage and need for validation are his sole sources of comfort. As hopeless as Jake seems now, his self-inflicted abuse and alienation only become more pronounced in Part 5.
