De Niro $pectacular

Covering twenty years, the part of La Motta is a plumb one, and who else but Robert De Niro could play it? If nothing else, what other actor, apart from Elizabeth Taylor, could put on and take off about twenty kilos during the production of one film? De Niro is renowned for his 'method' acting, and is perhaps the only actor around at the moment whose total involvement in the parts he plays is comparable to that of the young Brando. His performance in Raging Bull is spectacular and energetic, and obviously very strenuous -someone should tell Mr De Niro that there are easier ways to get an Oscar than by having his face punched in!

Another reason why this film is so satisfactory is the general high quality of the production. Martin Scorcese has directed De Niro in a similar sort of role set in the same period before (New York, New York), and now seems thoroughly adept at dealing with the two decades 1940 to 60. In particular, the idea of shooting in black and white gives the film a genuine, documentary feeling, perhaps because most of us derive our impressions of the forties and fifties from monochrome photographs and newsreels.

The standard of the photography is excellent, crisp and luminous, and generally makes you wish they'd get rid of gooey technicolor once and for all. The camera work and editing of the brief boxing sequences which seem to fill so much of the film, yet in fact only make up a few minutes of the total, are particularly good. The camera swoops and soars, around and above, between the ropes, down from the ceiling with the judge's microphone, and finally down onto the canvas with a KO'd loser. The camera even becomes subjective at times, giving a 'La Motta's-eye-view' of the action in slow motion. This can be a little obtrusive, or even slightly heavy-handed, but it fits in well with the form of the movie as a reminiscence by La Motta over his career. Even the brief sequence of coloured 'home movies' right in the middle of the movie works rather like the photographs you find printed in the centre of a written autobiography.

Perhaps some groups could take exception to some of the content of this film; some will be turned off by the violence of some of the boxing sequences and by the very nature of the La Motta character, some by the language. (I wish I owned the copyright and got five cents every time they said "fuck" in this movie!) But it's a film for which it's well worth putting aside these prejudices, a film that may well last longer than many of its brasher contemporaries, and one of the best three dollars worths going in town at the moment.

S.D.