If I remember correctly, Raging Bull featured the F-word more times (128) than any motion picture released before it. The language alone was mind-blowing to the then 18-year-old Pope.

On the whole, it was a much more intense experience than American moviegoers were accustomed to. The boxing sequences were a world away from those in films like Rocky for starters, they were more brutal, almost expressionistic. It is hard to convey just how different Raging Bull seemed from every other film released in the summer of 1980. De Niro felt that such intense work was what Scorsese needed to rouse him from his self-imposed stupor.

Robert De Niro has commented that he was originally attracted to the material because he wanted to perform a stage version of Raging Bull on Broadway at night and shoot the film version during the day with Scorsese directing both. I see strong parallels between Jake LaMotta’s story of sin, forgiveness, and transcendence and the Martin Scorsese finally emerging from his late-1970s drug abuse hell. For more casual filmgoers, it may not be the first movie they think of when they hear Scorsese’s name but it may be the Scorses-iest. Five different writers would labor on Raging Bull’s script (including Schrader), but Scorsese here is not only recreating the neighborhood and milieu he grew up in, he’s commenting on his own life at the time he made the film. The material here feels more personal to Scorsese than the Paul Schrader-scripted Taxi Driver or even the Nicholas Pileggi/Scorsese collaborations Goodfellas and Casino. More than Taxi Driver, more than Casino, more than even Goodfellas, Raging Bull is the film that cements Martin Scorsese’s filmmaking style into the public consciousness.

Raging bull black and white