Raging Bull

Frost's Descent was two days ago; the Beginning of Winter is under a fortnight off. Two black-and-white films today, both ending at the moment a man is alone with himself.

The thread to today's other film is documented: in 1980 Scorsese placed Antonioni's Blow-Up on his own list of 39 essential foreign films for a young filmmaker. When his own turn came, he worked from the same fixation — a man convinced of something, holding no evidence, paying for it with his whole life.

The photographer in Blow-Up believes there is a body in his photographs and ends with the negatives stolen. The boxer in Raging Bull believes his wife is lying to him and never has a single thing confirmed. Both end the same way: a man alone, completing an exchange with something that is not there.

1941 年，布朗克斯。一个年轻的中量级拳手在一场有争议的判定里输了第一场。他有能力赢，但他不肯让别人替他安排。

他在泳池边看见一个十五岁的女孩，后来娶了她。他有一个替他谈生意、替他挡事的哥哥。他上了拳台像一台不知道停的机器，下了拳台也是。

片子从 1941 年走到 1964 年：一个拳王的全部职业生涯，和他身边所有人一个接一个地离开。

It opened in New York on 14 November 1980 to divided reviews. Four decades on it is widely regarded as Scorsese's finest film and one of the finest American films ever made.

It received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won two: Best Actor for Robert De Niro and Best Film Editing for Thelma Schoonmaker. In 1990 it became the first film selected for the National Film Registry in its first year of eligibility. In 2012 the Motion Picture Editors Guild voted it the best-edited film in history.

In the 2002 Sight & Sound directors' poll it tied for sixth with Bicycle Thieves and Vertigo; combining that year's directors' and critics' lists, it drew more votes than any film made after 1975. In the 2012 polls it placed 53rd with critics and 12th with directors. Roger Ebert named it the best film of the 1980s and put it among his ten greatest of all time.

Rotten Tomatoes: 92% from 151 reviews, 9.30/10. Metacritic: 90 from 28 critics. CinemaScore audiences gave it an A.

Its first run was not a success: $23.4 million against an $18 million budget. Scorsese worried he would not be financed again, and said publicly that this would be his Hollywood swan song.