For all the reams of paper poured out on the grandeur of the recreations of Jake LaMotta's most celebrated bouts, which strike the movie like a drumbeat, Martin Scorsese had no interest in strategy or prowess. or even a GoodFellas, but the angry voice of American cinema rang as clear and cold as the ringside bell back in 1980, when Martin Scorsese laid down a peerless imprint of what cinema could aspire to - art, truth and exhaustion. It is hard to adore Raging Bull like an E.T. The chocolatey velvet of its blood - incidentally, all Jake LaMotta's - spurting, gushing and draining away like rainwater, where every vital droplet tells you something you probably didn't want to know. Those virtuoso dimensions of character, boldly grim and depressing to the bitter end, reducing viewers to gibbering wrecks, slumped by the shocking depravity that can be touched by the human spirit.

Those contrasting licks of docu-drab and dreamily inventive black-and-white cinematography, framed to perfection. Let’s not quibble, Raging Bull is everything it is cracked up to be.

Raging bull colour