Martin Scorsese’s ‘Raging Bull’ Found Inspiration in a Buster Keaton Comedy

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• Scorsese drew inspiration from Buster Keaton’s silent film Battling Butler while making Raging Bull, showcasing Keaton’s comedic boxing scenes and the protagonist’s journey from inexperience to strength.
• Scorsese initially had no interest in making a sports movie, especially one about boxing, but Robert De Niro persuaded him to take on the project, resulting in one of Scorsese’s most acclaimed works.
• Both Battling Butler and Raging Bull use boxing as a metaphor for personal battles and internal conflicts, with Scorsese framing the brutality of the sport as a form of self-mutilation and exploring themes of redemption and spirituality.

While watching the primal unraveling of the male ego that is Martin Scorsese‘s Raging Bull, the relentless barrage of fists, disturbed characters, and furious tone probably does not evoke the image of Buster Keaton, the “Great Stone Face” of silent cinema. Keaton, known for his deadpan, naive characterization, and expertly crafted comedic stuntwork, is one of the most iconic figures in the history of filmmaking. You might be surprised to learn that Scorsese drew influence from Keaton’s silent work while making Raging Bull.

Martin Scorsese pulled from Keaton’s 1926 comedy feature, Battling Butler for his biographical drama about real-life boxer Jake LaMotta. Battling Butler follows Keaton as Alfred Butler, a rich young man who, in an attempt to court a woman of lower social status, accidentally begins impersonating a boxer who shares his name. When Scorsese found difficulty wrapping his arms around making a sports movie, especially one about boxing, he turned to the cinema of the past for inspiration. The film ended up becoming one of his most acclaimed works, garnered universal praise, and is now a part of the Criterion Collection. Robert De Niro, Scorsese’s frequent collaborator plays LaMotta with Oscar-winning ferocity and power. The harrowing movie reflects the brutality of the sport, the cinematic metaphors that can be expressed through fighting, and a character who is punishing himself as much as he is punishing his opponents in the ring. So just how does Buster Keaton’s influence come through in Raging Bull?​​​​​​​

What Is Buster Keaton’s ‘Battling Butler’ About?

While Buster Keaton’s film is a comedy, the few sparring sequences are a visual treat. Keaton gives his all in the performance. The naive, inexperienced man is faced with a true challenge when the boxer he impersonated becomes angry and begins attacking him. Keaton is taking the blows, as his character is quite meek. However, when he notices the woman he has been pining over watching the attack, Keaton musters up the courage to fight back.

On a narrative level, the movie is less about boxing and more about a sheltered man learning to take initiative, to escape the trappings of his inexperience and ignorance, and to enter the world as a stronger, more productive person who can work toward the things he desires. In this case, the driving force is his desire to garner the respect of a woman.

Boxing can be used as a metaphorical representation of a fight for just about anything. Buster Keaton turns his bout in the ring into a fight for independence, respect, and love. The film ends with him victorious, in classic sports movie fashion, having overcome the seemingly insurmountable odds. It is a lighthearted movie with an uplifting end, which is in stark contrast to the story Scorsese would tell years later about a boxer fighting his own internal battles.

Why Didn’t Martin Scorsese Want To Make ‘Raging Bull’ at First?

Although Raging Bull is now thought of as one of Scorsese’s most iconic films, he was not eager to make a sports movie of any kind. He was especially dismissive of the idea of a boxing film. In a profile from film historian Peter Biskind‘s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Scorsese explained his lack of knowledge or interest in the sporting world, saying “Anything with a ball… no good.”

Scorsese also had a tough time finding his way through to the heart of the source material. He found it difficult to excise a compelling story from LaMotta’s life or to find the humanity in the character, which makes sense considering how dark the source novel is. The book was brought to Scorsese’s attention by De Niro himself, who read it while filming The Godfather Part II. The story turned into more of a passion project for De Niro than the director, as he poured everything into embodying the brutality and primal rage of Jake LaMotta. De Niro urged Scorsese to consider taking it on at a particularly difficult period in the director’s life when he was struggling with addiction and on the brink of being unable to work again.

According to Biskind’s book, the screenplay was originally written by Mardik Martin, who also wrote Scorsese’s Mean Streets, a film that can be thought of as the one where Scorsese found his voice and set the stage for the seminal work he would do in Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, and other major works from the coming decades. Robert De Niro biographer John Baxter wrote in his book that De Niro was unimpressed with this first draft. Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver and would go on to make many films of his own following similar themes, was brought on to rewrite the screenplay.

While Scorsese clashed with himself during the making of the film, it turned out to be one of his most singularly powerful works. For a director who had such an aversion to telling a story set in the sporting world, Scorsese managed to narrow in on all the rich, cinematic metaphors that come with a sport as physical and visually striking as boxing. It is easy for internal conflict to be reflected through external conflict, especially when the conflict is something as overt as two men punching each other. However, it is difficult to capture this conflict in such an artful, tasteful way. Framing the brutality as some form of self-mutilation (a recurring theme in Schrader’s writing), Scorsese turns a primal sport into an eternal, and internal, battle for a man’s very soul.

The striking imagery of the bloody sponge on De Niro’s back, the blood covering the ropes, and De Niro’s arms backed against the ropes all evoke baptism and crucifixion. Spirituality, especially through the lens of Catholicism, recurs in all the films Scorsese makes, especially those about complicated, violent figures. There is a constant striving to find purity in the hearts of men who may be considered evil, a fight for redemption, and the ability to forgive oneself or even feel worthy to ask for forgiveness, which is contradicted by continuing their cruel and violent behavior. This back-and-forth is explored in so many of Scorsese’s works but feels especially pointed in a movie about a man who steps into a ring to fight the most brutal battles with his body while fighting an even rougher one within himself.

How Did Buster Keaton’s Film Influence ‘Raging Bull’?

Now you may be wondering how it could be possible that such a dark, relentless movie could have been inspired by one of the great comedy filmmakers. Scorsese cited Keaton as “the only person who had the right attitude about boxing in the movies.” While Battling Butler was a comedic movie at its core, the film’s boxing scenes are well-made, with striking moments of comedy and tension at once. Keaton’s performance involves taking many punches, flailing about, flipping over the ropes, and all of these moments, as funny as they are, reflect Scorsese’s notion that boxing is somewhat barbaric. Keaton’s character, like Scorsese in the making of the film, approaches the sport with hesitation and struggles to find his footing, before eventually getting the hang of things.

Keaton’s big fight toward the end of the film turns into a serious fight, and in a blind rage, he can muster the strength and fury to defeat his opponent. Even the typically naive, innocent persona of Keaton is swept away into the catharsis and primal nature of the sport. Keaton was taking these hits for real, approaching them like he did the rest of his stunts. This movie came at a time of personal turmoil for Keaton, who was struggling with finances, alcoholism, creative control of his work, and his marriage. Because he was a man who tended to put himself in death-defying positions for the sake of his art, some critics and even people close to Keaton feared he had a death wish, that the struggles of his personal life were pushing him to act recklessly or perhaps even intentionally hurt himself. While Keaton disputed these claims, the actor certainly approached filmmaking with a resounding relentlessness.

As a champion of film preservation and restoration, Scorsese’s work shows great admiration for the icons of the silent era. While the stories being told in these two films could not be more different, their approach to boxing as a means to communicate internal conflicts faced by the protagonists is similar. This reverence for the cinema of the past can lead to some unexpected inspiration. One of Scorsese’s most massive achievements as a filmmaker sharing DNA with one of Keaton’s lesser-known features is exemplary of the value artists get out of digging into cinema’s storied past.

Raging Bull is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

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