onyx · GR·654
Raging Bull (1980)
Scorsese's boxing film, in chiaroscuro out of an old tabloid
Specimen · 2026-10-16 onyx · K86
Scorsese shot it in grainy black and white, and MoMA compares its chiaroscuro to old tabloid photographs of the big fight: a boxer’s face in hard light, gloves up, everything else dropped into shadow.
The film follows Jake LaMotta, played by Robert De Niro, a club brawler whose one gift is absorbing punishment in the ring and who hands it out beyond it, to his brother (Joe Pesci) and his wife (Cathy Moriarty). LaMotta’s real fight toward the middleweight crown in 1949 inspired it.
The film is in MoMA’s collection, and the museum calls it Scorsese’s simplest and most direct study of what turns tough guys into mayhem machines.
Source: MoMA · https://www.moma.org/collection/works/307278
Tonal range bin K00 → K99
000816243240485664728088
Nearby on the ramp
Palette4 steps
K86
K86 · onyx
#252221
PMS Black 3 C
R37 G34 B33
K89
K89 · carbon
#1D1C1A
PMS Black 3 C
R29 G28 B26
K92
K92 · carbon
#151412
PMS Black 6 C
R21 G20 B18
K95
K95 · carbon
#0D0B0B
PMS Black 6 C
R13 G11 B11
Dossier5 rows
Director Martin Scorsese
Cast Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty
Year 1980
Collection MoMA, Department of Film, W9337
Restoration Criterion #1134, 4K from the original camera negative
