It got a critical kicking on its release, but for my money The King of Comedy was Martin Scorsese's finest film, with Robert De Niro working at the top of his game
When I interviewed Martin Scorsese for this Sunday's Observer New Review, he described Michael Powell's 1960 shocker Peeping Tom as "one of my all-time favourite movies" ? a film that brilliantly dramatises the "pathology of cinema" and the "dangers of gazing". Decried by critics and hounded out of cinemas on its initial release, the film became a lost classic, and was only rediscovered after Scorsese helped get it into the New York film festival and co-financed its rerelease two decades later. Peeping Tom is now considered the pinnacle of Powell's career.
As for Scorsese, it seems to me that the director's own greatest film is still one of his least applauded. Ask any casual fan to name their top Scorsese flicks and the chances are they'll come up with titles, such as Taxi Driver and Mean Streets, that came to define the cutting edge of American cinema in the 70s; or Raging Bull, a searing portrait of the life of Jake La Motta, featuring Robert De Niro at his body-changing best. Or what about Goodfellas, which remains so popular that a possible small-screen prequel is in the offing?
While all these movies are terrific indeed, they pale by comparison with Scorsese and De Niro's finest ? and most often overlooked ? work: The King of Comedy. The salutary tale of an aspiring comedian who kidnaps his idol, Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis, playing close to type), in order to ensure a TV spot, The King of Comedy has more to say about the parlous state of modern celebrity culture than any other movie I can call to mind. As the borderline psychopath Rupert Pupkin, De Niro channels the most terrifying elements of Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, his delusional (and supposedly humorous) "at home" monologues every bit as alarming as Bickle's oft-quoted "You talkin' to me?" tirade.
Perfectly pitched between satire and horror, The King of Comedy finds both its director and star working at the peak of their powers ? the dramatic punch of the piece being strengthened by understatement, by the fact that neither director nor star are grandstanding. There's a palpable sense of clawing unease about the depiction of Langford's hermetically sealed life ("How did you get this number?"), which Pupkin punctures simply by refusing to take no for an answer; in his mind, he's Jerry's "friend", the heir to his comic throne, and no amount of empirical evidence to the contrary will persuade him otherwise.
The real payoff comes in the film's third act, when we finally get to see Pupkin's act ? and discover that his standup schtick is neither good nor bad, but (more disturbingly) maddeningly mediocre. De Niro reportedly honed his skills in small standup clubs, studying performers and testing his own material ? the same devotion he brought to boxing in Raging Bull, a profession in which, as Jake La Motta once told me, De Niro genuinely could have been a contender. But somehow comedy ? or more precisely, unremarkable comedy ? seems even harder to get right than being repeatedly punched in the face, and De Niro and Scorsese never miss a bit. Despite getting a critical and public kicking when first released, The King of Comedy is quite breathtakingly brilliant, and I'd take Pupkin over Bickle any day (and my colleague Jonathan Jones agrees). How about you?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/19/best-scorsese-king-of-comedy
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