Martin Scorcese’s biography of boxer Jake La Motta is the movie for which Robert De Niro famously piled on nearly 30 kg and won his second Oscar.

It has phenomenal performances, fantastic black and white photography, and the fight scenes are wonderfully choreographed and edited. But it is very slow burn, and whilst it is now widely considered one of the greatest movies of all time, it is not even my favourite DeNiro/Scorcese collaboration. (Personally, I would chose most of their gangster movies together over this, especially Goodfellas).

I remember seeing this originally in a small art-house cinema in Nottingham and I was puzzled as to why at one point the characters aged suddenly as the action jumped forward a number of years without explanation. It was only when I bought the movie on DVD years later that I realised the version I saw in the cinema had a whole reel missing, and was about 30 minutes shorter than intended! The projectionist obviously had an off-night….

At the top here is a French ‘petit’ poster, which uses the same image of De Niro in the ring as was used on most of the marketing materials worldwide (including the DVD I have above). More recently, I also picked up the French ‘grande’ above, which also includes a glimpse of DeNiro as La Motta in his later years. You can find both these posters for sale here.