(As you can tell, it's been more than 40 years and I still haven't completely gotten over it.) Once again, art lost to commerce, an edgy film fell to a safe one, and glossy upper-middle-class ideals beat the raw truth of the street.
It certainly wasn't the first time the Academy got it wrong, but rarely did the oversight seem so glaring, the snub so overt. When Raging Bull lost that year's Best Picture Oscar to the fine but oh-so-mainstream family drama Ordinary People and the renegade Scorsese lost the Best Director award to first-timer and industry darling Robert Redford, my sense of outrage and disappointment knew no bounds. Rarely, if ever, had I seen such total command of the medium, such muscular enthusiasm on screen, and I was awed by it. Like La Motta, Scorsese pummels us with an almost non-stop barrage of breathtaking cinematic punches, but unlike the fighter's battered opponents, I exited the ring feeling exhilarated. The 37-year-old director told the searing tale of the brash, brutish boxer with such bold style and invention and so seamlessly combined grit and elegance, I knew I had just witnessed the work of a modern master.
I was 18 and studying film history at Northwestern University, but the distinctive styles of such lauded auteurs as Hitchcock, Ford, and Hawks could not prepare me for Scorsese's riveting examination of Jake La Motta. It was like nothing I had ever seen. That was my initial reaction after watching Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull for the first time during its 1980 theatrical release.
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