A recent rewatch of Raging Bull (1980) pushed it into my top three for Martin Scorsese. Though shot in black and white—either because it is a period piece or as an homage to Federico Fellini because it does feel like something he could have made—the movie explores a colorful array of topics, from twisted masculine sexuality to the all-consuming nature of American entertainment. It is not actually so much about boxing, though Robert DeNiro’s Jake LaMotta is so self-destructive that you begin to welcome the scenes where someone else is abusing him.
So much can be done with the subject of boxing, as demonstrated too by Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing, recently opened at the Norton Museum of Art. The group show features more than 100 artworks, most of them contemporary, though the exhibition reaches back to the era when boxing was one of the primary diversions with some nice Eadweard Muybridge collotypes and a rich and lonely watercolor by Edward Hopper.
