Analysis of a title sequence

Analysis of a title sequence 

Robert DeNiro’s Jake LaMotta is a coiled animal, caged like a note on sheet music: fierce, balletic, and balanced to its function. The ropes of the ring are frames, like bars of music. Indeed, “give me a stage where this bull here can rage… that’s entertainment.” A row of people sit, silhouettes in judgement, while flashbulbs pop and die with the slow pace of the events about to unfold.

The opening of Raging Bull bears something uneasy, yet refined and languorous. The opening sequences has the perfect music here, it’s “Intermezzo” from the opera Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni as well as incredibly visualized soundscapes, beautiful black-and-white cinematography, and a sophisticated yet gritty production design.

Instead of moving in tandem with or in the same direction as the action, the music runs against the scene, playing in stark contrast. The Cavalleria rusticana makes the scene celestial, dreamy, elevating LaMotta’s furious display to the level of graceful performance. This technique of placing classical music against a scene of action also slowed down, in black and white is used to stunning effect.

The introduction to LaMotta is through movement, through extremities: his hands, his feet, bobbing and weaving through air and smoke. Faceless, nameless, alone, an instrument of choreography, De Niro’s LaMotta embodies both the star and the never-was. His slow hooded dance is a performance of masculinity, a show of strength and ambition, a threat of violence doused in elegance. His power as a man is the crux, the focal point from which the story pivots.
We believe this scene, LaMotta shadowboxing in the fog, to be the beginning, but hindsight tells a different tale.

 Link to title sequence video:http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/raging-bull/