Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader’s subject was a well-known one: former world middleweight champion boxer Jake LaMotta’s autobiography had been published in 1970, cementing a celebrity legend built on equal parts sporting prowess and turbulent personal chaos. Yet the ne plus ultra of Scorsese’s fixation with, shall we say, challenging protagonists remains Raging Bull, the director’s first and greatest foray into the often fusty realm of the biopic. Even in more conventional story forms, he complicates things: Cape Fear muddied the victim-villain boundary between Robert De Niro’s psychotic killer and Nick Nolte’s corrupt family man, while The Age of Innocence honoured the spirit of Edith Wharton, denying audiences a clear outcome to root for in a love triangle between variously cool, compromised or manipulative participants. From Taxi Driver through to The Wolf of Wall Street via The King of Comedy and Goodfellas, his cinema specialises in antihero figures as hard to love as they are to look away from. But it’s not so in every case, and few film-makers have dedicated themselves to testing the viewer’s sympathies as consistently as Martin Scorsese.
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