Formal Analysis of Raging Bull Martin Scorsese’s film “Raging Bull” is considered by many to be one of the greatest “sports” films of all time. The plot focuses on the professional and personal life of boxer Jake LaMotta. In the opening sequence, the film uses narrative, mise en scene, cinematography, editing, and sound to provide a framework for the rest of the picture. These elements also help to establish the film’s themes of nostalgia, isolation, loneliness, and suffering. In addition to setting up the film’s themes, these elements also help to create two distinct personas of the main character Jake LaMotta. The narrative form exhibited in the opening sequence seems simple at first glance, but actually conveys a multitude of …show more content…
Occasionally, the scene will be interrupted by the sudden appearance of flashbulbs penetrating the smoky air. This not only lends a feeling of authenticity for the setting and time period, it also reflects the sudden outbursts of violence prevalent throughout the rest of the film. LaMotta himself is shrouded in his robe and shadows, making his face impossible to see, however his gloved fists are easily seen as he gracefully throws jabs and stalks the left side of the ring. This introduces his fists as a motif that is repeated throughout the film. For example, LaMotta sees his hands as being too small, later he abuses them against a cell wall, and most obviously are a symbol of his livelihood. His fists are a tool, which he uses to punish others, as well as himself. The scene cuts to a sign, in the middle of the screen, that reads “An Evening with Jake LaMotta” and the audience hears the voice of LaMotta for the first time, which will lead to the next scene. The use of the word “evening” signals the transition that is about to take place. The audience has seen LaMotta early in his career and now are about to witness him in his career’s twilight. This short scene ends when a man crosses in front of the sign, creating a swiping effect. Now, the third scene begins. The viewer is presented a medium shot of an older, overweight, and sloppy LaMotta. Juxtaposing the composition of the opening scene where LaMotta is seen on the left
Boxing, an official sanctioned sport in the early 20th century, is a sport that is known as one of the most violent and physically demanding sports on the earth. Professional boxers that get paid to fight must be in top shape in order to preform at the highest level. Being a professional boxer is a tough life. Boxers train hard for many months leading up to one fight and either win, lose, knock out the opponent or even get knocked out. The sport has been around for centuries, but has most recently taken off over the last 100 years. It is a multibillion dollar industry with fighters taking home hundreds of thousands of dollars if not even millions of dollars for big matches. In his novel Papa Jack, Roberts tells the story of the famous African American boxer Jack Johnson. He details the boxers rise to fame and fortune and his downward spiral that would soon follow. In Papa Jack, Roberts displays life of a professional boxer through firsthand accounts with events that happened during Johnson’s life and shows how boxing not only influenced his life but also how he influenced the African American community.
Moreover, the implementation of having two well-known fighters such as Muhammed Ali and Billy Costello, heavyweight champion and lightweight champions respectively, provided reinforcement in Oates rhetorical modes. The use of pathos in Oates argument was integral and building a foundation on Muhammed Ali’s Parkinson’s disease proved to be effective. “Predate by a decade the long, grueling, punishing fights of Ali’s later career, whose accumulative
Bart Layton built this doc not from one perspective, but from a collection of them. Some stories, like “The Imposter” need a panoptic approach to connect the audience to the film. The themes of manipulation, identity and love are the main themes conveyed by Layton. These themes are communicated through sounds and visual imagery.
He began again to daze off staring at the fire and imagining the hairy man crouched down in the summer sun. The Call of the Wild written by Jack London is an adventure book that follows the life of a once tamed dog known as Buck to a dog that has retrogressed to a more primitive state during the Yukon Gold Rush. Buck who eventually answered the call of the wild had to go through many difficulties to get there.The theme power of the primitive is reinforced by the retrogression of a dog despite the love of mankind.
An example of this in the opening sequence is the music. Beginning calm and gently, the
The documentary, “Unforgivable Blackness” directed by Ken Burns casts light on the extraordinary life story of legendary boxer Jack Johnson. The documentary is about the barriers Jack Johnson had to overcome to satisfy his hunger for becoming the best and living “The American Dream.” Johnson had humble beginnings in Galveston, Texas and it was in those beginnings that glimpses of his bright future were slowly but surely beginning to show. Through out his life, he showed independence, relentlessness, ability to improvise, call attention to himself and get around rules meaning to tie him down. Jack Johnson was a self made man who had the drive to go forward and achieve what he wanted to achieve
Literary devices will be a primary source used to compare and contrast the narrative and stylistic choices made in the short story, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, and the film 2081 directed by Chandler Tuttle. In the film the director is able to express visuals, sounds, and physical characters, to establish a firm idea of how the characters within the story act and feel based on their surroundings and what is happening around them. However, an Author in a short story is reliant on his words alone to paint the picture for the reader to understand the movement of the plot and its impact on the atmosphere. The literary devices used in creating and shaping pieces of literature will heavily impact the point of view of the
To begin with, the most striking feature of this work is that it is a story
The movie Cinderella Man is a biographical film of boxer James J. Braddock that illustrates his struggle through the Great Depression. Movies often exaggerate the suffering of the Great Depression or just gloss over it, but Cinderella Man accurately shows the prevailing attitude of the time through the facial expressions of the actors and the obstacles they overcome. In the film, the people on the street and in the crowd in the boxing arenas appear worried and never smile. The only time that people appear happy is while watching the excitement of a boxing match. This shows how important sporting events like boxing were to a public which had very little to cheer about. In a time when few people had television sets in their houses, listening to a boxing match on the radio let people imagine the fights through their own interpretations in their heads. The movie correctly shows how boxing was a temporary shelter from the suffering for many.
Cinderella Man was an incredibly magnificent and uplifting film that followed the life of the “Bulldog”, later entitled “Cinderella Man”, starring Russell Crowe as James J. Braddock, the American heavyweight boxer. Primarily, Cinderella Man embodies strength and willpower as once-undefeated heavyweight fighter, Braddock’s loses started to rapidly accumulate, so bad that he was released from his boxing contract and was merciless impeded from fighting. Correspondingly, deprived of work the bulldog began to undertake hard labor during the Great Depression to counterbalance myriad bills and overdue payments. Moreover, Braddock and his wife Mae together had three children to nourish. Correspondingly, years later, Joe Gould played by Paul Giamatti, was Braddock’s old boxing manager and contracted him one last concluding fight, which he won. Hence, the Bulldog started to train again and James J. Braddock was reborn after countless winning comebacks. Ultimately, Jimmy undergoes a fairy tale rise from a poor local fighter to the heavyweight-boxing champion of the world.
The storyline jumps from one storyline to the next and presented in nonchronological order. Tarantino gives us bits and pieces of one story then jumps to another. This style of narrative is unusual. Ultimately, the whole story comes full circle. The opening scene ends where the scene began. We see the conclusion of the robbery and how it connects to the film.
"The beginning is simple to mark". This is the opening sentence of Ian McEwan's novel "Enduring Love", and in this first sentence, the reader is unwittingly drawn into the novel. An introduction like this poses the question, the beginning of what? Gaining the readers curiosity and forcing them to read on. The very word "beginning" allows us an insight into the importance of this event, for the narrator must have analysed it many a time in order to find the moment in which it all began, and so it is obviously significant period of his life. And surely if the beginning is "simple", what is to come must be complex. This and the writers delaying tactics, attention to precise detail and a red herring hook the reader and draw them well and
Being one of the world’s most popular art forms, it was inevitable that these archetypes would find their way into film as well. In this essay I will argue that the
In cinema, there are many memorable scenes, but few are as iconic as a Rocky training montage. The horns from the montage’s music blast a feeling of triumph as you watch the fictional character, Rocky Balboa, train. The emotions from this scene can make the laziest person feel like they can run ten miles without the feeling of fatigue. Rocky is a series of six movies about a fictional boxer named Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone, and the triumphs of his boxing career. Rocky has an exhilarating boxing match as an underdog in each one of his movies. Also, in all the movies, there is often a singular theme of perseverance despite any of the hardships Rocky must face. The same theme can be found in the spin-off of the Rocky series, Creed. Creed takes place after Rocky’s retirement from boxing. The new protagonist, Adonis Creed, is the illegitimate child of the late former heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed. Adonis receives help from Rocky to pursue his career boxing professionally. Along his journey, Adonis comes into contact with many characters that portray the same characteristic of being able to persevere through their challenges and afflictions. Although there seems to be a singular message, Creed’s recurring theme of perseverance can be expressed in many ways because of the various adversities each character had to overcome.
and this is also achieved by having the man look right at the camera. As he speaks, the camera slowly pulls out and then we start to see a slight increase in the surrounding detail of the scene. We can now see part of the back and side of the Godfather, (Marlon Brando) but still we have only a slight highlight on his side, and no detail. Now the man gets up and moves to Brando’s side, and he too is in complete shadow; we can only really make out the fact that there are two figures present here, no more. Then the shot changes as the man leaves the Godfather’s side, and it is a revealing frontal MCU of Brando. This shot is lit much more than the previous shot. Where the other shot’s background was pitch black, this shot is lit so that almost the whole space and all objects in it are visible. Brando has a key, fill and backlight on him, and his character is revealed with much intensity because of the dramatic light change from shot to shot. When the shot comes back to the man, in an over the shoulder (Brando) style, again the backround is totally black. Having the man in that particular lighting, and having Brando lit the way he is serves two psychological purposes. First, having the constant black background behind the man isolates his problem and makes us aware of how consumed he is with his problem.