Rating: 4/5 Author: Roger Ebert Translation: Peprika (Title self-designed)
"Angry Bull" is not just a movie about boxing, it is more about a jealous, impulsive and dangerous man who was forced to confess and reform in the boxing ring. The script does not care about the details of the fight on the boxing ring. After all, Jack LaMotta is not so much fighting with his fists as he is driving his laughter with his fear in his heart.
When his wife Vicki said that his opponent was good-looking, he was undoubtedly irritated and beat the opponent's face into a mush during the game. In the audience, a mafia boss leaned over and said to his men, "He doesn't have his original beautiful face anymore." After the punishment for his opponent was over, Jack (Robert De Niro) did not look at his opponent, but looked into the eyes of his wife (Kathy Moratti), who also understood.
Martin Scorsese’s 1980 movie was rated as the greatest movie in the decade in three polls, but when he was making this movie, he wanted to know that this movie was finally Can it be released, "We feel that this is a movie made for ourselves". Scorsese and De Niro have been reading Jack La Motta's autobiography, and the heavyweight boxing champion's match with Sugar Ray Robinson once became a legend in the 1940s and 50s. They invited Paul Schrader, the editor of Taxi Driver, to write the script. But at the time, this project has been stagnant, because Scorsese and De Niro were busy with another ambitious but unable to grasp the key musical "New York, New York". Worse still, Scorsese dyed Declined by drug addiction. De Niro threw La Motta's autobiography on Scorsese's bed while visiting his old friend, "I think we should do this." The script of the movie was later handed over to Medic Martin (the screenwriter of "Bad Streets") for further polishing, all of which seem to have achieved Scorsese's recuperation and rebirth.
Thanks to the leading actor De Niro and editor Selma Skunmek, this film won two awards for Best Actor and Best Editing at the Oscars. It also won Best Picture and Best Editing. Director, Best Supporting Actor (Joe Persie), Best Supporting Actress (Moratti) Nominations. It is not like the best film in the eyes of an "ordinary person", but time has given a different answer.
For Scorsese, La Motta's life seems to be an eternal theme throughout his own work, and the characters in his script have never been able to trust women and establish contact with them. It is not boxing that drives La Motta's life, but his jealous obsession with his wife Vicki and his fear of sex. When he first saw her, he was fascinated by the 15-year-old cool blond girl in front of him. She was far older than her real age, and in many shots even taller than La Mota herself. More robust.
Although there is no direct evidence in the film that she has been unfaithful to him, the 15-year-old has begun to get along with street thugs. On the first date with La Mota, she stared horizontally at La Mota and waited for him to take the initiative to prove that she was a confident woman. The 19-year-old Moratti gave a convincing performance of women in the later stages of marriage, which is quite amazing.
Jack has an ambivalence towards women, which Freud called "". For La Motta, women are inaccessible pure things-but when they have physical contact (with men), they become suspicious. In the movie, La Motta has been fantasizing that Vicky is unfaithful to him, in order to torture herself. He twisted every word he heard, every look he noticed. He has never caught evidence of her unfaithfulness, but he will still abuse her, even if he has no evidence in his hand, to him, suspicion is evidence of her guilt.
The two closest to each other in the film are undoubtedly La Motta and his brother Joey (played by Joe Pesci). It was pure luck that Percy got the role. When De Niro invited him to audition after seeing him in a B-rated movie, he even decided to give up being an actor. The performances of Percy and De Niro in the film are counterpoint and equal; their quarrel sounds like crazy music, for example, in a scene where Jack gradually loses his way in Joey’s explanation, Joey explains Said, "You lose, you win. You win, you win. Anyway, you win." And Jack was responsible for the ambiguous relationship between Joey and Vicky when he was repairing TV, "Maybe you don't know what you are talking about". These conversations reflect Scorsese’s childhood in Little Italy, as Jack told his first wife that the steak was cooked too cooked "against his own will."
Compared with the planned two weeks, Scorsese took 10 weeks to film the boxing scene. They used their own methods to produce as many special effects as in science fiction movies. The soundtrack cleverly combines the noise of the crowd, the sounds of animals, the sounds of birds, and the explosion of flashing lights (actually the sound of a glass plate being smashed). We don't subconsciously discern everything we hear, and the atmosphere is in place.
The boxing scene was broken down into dozens of shots. Skumek didn't edit according to the punching process, but directly showed each violent punching action. Sometimes the camera is only a few inches from the fist; unlike the traditional boxing scene, Scholes condenses the picture on the ring and freely changes the viewing area to meet the needs of the film-sometimes claustrophobic and frightening, sometimes Make it into an unnaturally elongated state.
The fighting scene was extremely cruel. La Mota played his opponent looking docile. Punch after punch was set off by the soundtrack. Scorsese used a sponge hidden in his gloves and a thin tube in the boxer's hair to spray sweat and blood; these boxing scenes were soaked by the liquid produced by the fight. One big reason for shooting with black and white film is that Scorsese is unwilling to show all the blood in color photos.
The best visual effect in the film is to use slow motion to imply a highly tense consciousness. Just as Travis Bickel scanned the streets of New York in slow motion in "Taxi Driver," La Motta also looked at Vicky intently, as if time was stagnant. Normal motion is shot at 24 frames per second, while slow motion requires more frames per second, so it takes longer to show them. Scorsese cleverly used a speed of 30 or 36 frames per second, so that when Jack became paranoid and nervous because of Vicky's behavior, we could fully feel the squinted eyes and the constant burning anger.
The film is divided into scenes based on the life of the elderly La Mota. The elderly La Mota became bald and fat. She ran a nightclub by telling jokes, and even lived as a host in a strip club in Manhattan. When De Niro gained weight, the filming was suspended, and then his belly was so cumbersome to carry around. The ending part depicts his desperation. He slammed his fist on the walls of the Miami prison madly, shouting, "Why! Why! Why!"
Soon after, La Motta ran into his younger brother on the streets of New York, and slowly revealed the salvation of the character from the gentle embrace of the two. There is a very wonderful scene in the movie. De Niro is sitting in the dressing room facing the mirror and reciting the lines from "The Wharf" ("I could have been a competitor"). It is not that De Niro is imitating Brando, as people often misunderstand, but La Mota played by De Niro is imitating Terry Malloy played by Brando. De Niro could have imitated better, but what's the point?
"Angry Bull" is the portrayal of the most painful and heartbreaking jealous man in the movie, and the "Othello" of our time. This is the best movie I have seen about the low self-esteem, malaise and fear of men abusing women. Boxing is just the venue where the story takes place, not the theme of the movie. La Mota is known for never being knocked down in the ring. In the movie, he is passively leaning against and standing, putting his hands on his side and letting his opponent beat him. We can understand why he did not fall. He was hurt so badly that he couldn't stop the pain.
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