Jake La Motta (Robert DeNiro) is introduced middle aged, rounded and rehearsing lines backstage for his nightclub act, “An Evening With Jake La Motta” in 1964. His story moves back to 1941, when Jake La Motta, the young, vicious middleweight boxer loses his first fight by decision, when he lets his opponent wail on him for too long before knocking him down in the final round. The crowd riots.

Back in the Bronx, Jake laments to his brother and manager Joey (Joe Pesci, in his first major film role) that because of his weight class, he’ll never get to fight Joe Louis, “and I’m better than him.” Joey is being leaned on by Salvy Matts (Frank Vincent), middle man for the neighborhood Mafioso, who reminds Joey that without their help, Jake won’t get the title fight he desires.

Jake wants to do things his own way. He becomes infatuated with a 15-year-old neighborhood girl named Vickie, played with a quiet authority in her screen debut by Cathy Moriarty. Jake mows through his opponents until no one – except his skilled rival Sugar Ray Robinson – will climb into the ring with him. In 1949, Jake finally agrees to throw a match for the mob in order to be given a shot at the title.

Now champ, Jake eats and drinks his way out of shape, and through rampant paranoia, interrogates those closest to him until he sabotages his relationships. He retires from sports and opens a nightclub in Miami, but Vickie has had enough abuse and leaves with their three children. La Motta is indicted for abetting prostitution of a 14-year-old girl, before returning to New York and attempting to reconcile with his brother.

Robert DeNiro visited director Martin Scorsese on the set of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore with a book he liked, a ghostwritten autobiography of Jake La Motta. DeNiro told Scorsese there might be a movie in it. Irwin Winkler agreed to produce it, if they could get Scorsese to direct.

DeNiro and Winkler had a hard time getting Scorsese’s attention. He had no interest in boxing, no idea what the character was about, and after the failure of New York, New York, was emotionally drained. Winkler hired Scorsese’s friend Mardik Martin to adapt the book, but the script was not liked at United Artists.

DeNiro went to Paul Schrader on the set of his second film as a director, Hardcore. Schrader agreed to rewrite the script, letting DeNiro and Scorsese know he was doing them a favor. Schrader conducted his own research, and over the course of six weeks, tapped into tension he experienced with his own brother Leonard to develop the relationship between Jake and Joey. But even Schrader found the characters repellent.

United Artists still wanted no part of Raging Bull. Winkler, who produced Rocky for the studio, used a proposed Italian Stallion sequel as leverage. Scorsese continued to dither, and was later rushed to the hospital with massive internal bleeding from bad cocaine he’d consumed. DeNiro visited him and got around to asking whether they were doing the movie or not. La Motta’s self-destructiveness resonated with Scorsese now, and he said yes.

Scorsese announced he wanted to shoot in black and white, in order to give the film a tabloid look. After New York, New York, he was convinced this was going to be his last movie. He had no expectations to live up to, nothing to lose. With reckless creative abandon, Scorsese made what many consider the greatest film of his career.

Where Raging Bull ranks among Scorsese’s best is open to debate, but there’s no question this is a great film. There’s DeNiro. Production shut down for two months as he gorged himself on spaghetti and ice cream and gained 60 pounds to play the aged La Motta. In addition to that feat, he really pushes the envelope as an actor, playing La Motta as abusive and reprehensible a man as possible, while somehow, I never wanted to turn away.

DeNiro & Pesci’s chemistry is more apparent here than any film they’ve made together. Their improvisation, the way Pesci bounces lines off DeNiro (“So go kill everybody. You’re such a tough guy, go kill people. Kill Salvy, kill Tommy, kill me. You’re killin’ yourself the way you eat, ya fat fuck, look at ya!”) is a thing of beauty. DeNiro & Pesci explore the sibling dynamic in the script superbly. This could be the best movie about brothers ever done.

Visually, the film cuts glass. Scorsese doesn’t show much audience in the boxing scenes. He stays in the ring, and lets us experience the fight through the heightened emotional state of the boxers. The black and white look Michael Chapman created recalls old photographs in Life Magazine, while a sequence of faded 16mm home movies in color was personally scratched by Scorsese with a coat hanger to give them authenticity. Editor Thelma Schoonmaker cut the film masterfully.

DeNiro and Scorsese used Schrader’s structure, but rewrote his script as an actor’s movie, using impressions about La Motta’s life, as opposed to the hard and fast cliches of biographical movies. It drifts from year to year, and Cathy Moriarty disappears without much notice. But the music, notably the elegant Intermezzo from Mascagni’s 1890 opera Cavalleria Rusticana, lends the film a profoundness and redemptive quality that made me feel I was watching a funeral wake.

Raging Bull was not successful at the box office, but in addition to the acclaim it later garnered (a Premiere Magazine poll of critics ranked it the best film of the decade), it was also nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. DeNiro and Schoonmaker were duly awarded Oscars, but Scorsese and his film were both given a cold shoulder by the Academy, who chose to honor Robert Redford’s directorial debut Ordinary People instead.