The color in Raging Bull

In my last blog I mentioned the sequence in the middle (or maybe it just seemed like the middle) of the film that included color. I’ll call that sequence the interlude. The editing in this section caught my eye the most when watching Raging Bull.

The interlude crunches time from January 14, 1944 to March 14, 1947. About three years occur during a span of about three minutes of film time. The following will discuss the techniques that were used to make this sequence work for time and other aspects.

Ellipsis is used to show the three year span of time in three minutes. There is a rhythm shared between each scene, which makes the whole sequence feel together. The pace during the interlude is quick—it seems like each shot lasts for about five second or so. Within each scene, the editor chose quick little shots to show what was happening in a fast paced manner. However, the pace does not make it seem too fast because the scene will stay on screen for a little while. Each scene is made up of the series of short shots.

The time factor is known because the scenes in color are juxtaposed by black and white clips of Jake’s fights that included the date and location of the fight. The quick shots combined with the quick fight scenes is the editor’s use of ellipsis. The fight scenes have about two shots each usually just to show the opponent and then Jake winning. Often, the editor just used still shots, but because of the fast paced manner, they may seem like they are moving shots.

The sequence is edited in a way that makes it feel like a home movie. During the first scene the audience may get the effect that Jake is the one filming because Vickie and Joey are on shown together and then Jake joins them. The cuts do not have transitions, like a home movie. The home movie feel allowed me to relate to the characters more—it just showed happy times between the four (Jake, Vickie, Joey and his wife) of them.

The pool scene during the interlude was a good example of how cuts can take some of the action out, while the audience still knows what is going on. Vickie opens the box from Jake, takes out the hat and then the editor cut to a shot of Vickie wearing the whole outfit and modeling it for Jake.

The final scene of this sequence shows Jake and Vickie in front of a house, then entering the house. The shot cuts into a scene in the backyard with a few kids running around. There was a time lapse, but because of a match-on-action of sorts, we knew that the scene was the backyard of the house that Jake and Vickie were standing in front of during the beginning of the scene. Children being present in this scene also helped with moving forward time because none of them were infants, so it was known that a one to three years had to have passed.

Many techniques go into a sequence that passes a long period of time and I think the editor of Raging Bull accomplished the goal of letting the audience in on three years that can’t really be included in the whole film, but are still important.

To view the interlude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIIAatoyfPU&feature=related