Why “The King Of Comedy” Boasts Robert De Niro’s Best Performance
You can argue about Robert De Niro’s best performances endlessly; did Scorsese get the best out of him as an Italian-American criminal, did Cimino give him the stage to impress above all others, or did Mann offer him that defining role? For me, his best was indeed in a Scorsese film but not as a mafia kingpin, “taxi driver” or boxer, but as a tragic sociopath in The King of Comedy.
Although we’ve seen a sprinkling of De Niro’s comedic talent in humorous films later in his career (Meet The Parents, Jackie Brown, Analyse This), the raw energy he had as a younger actor in Mean Streets and The Godfather Part 2 is inevitably lacking. That he channelled it into his head-turning performances in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Deer Hunter suggested his strengths were enlivened by tough roads and tougher men.
That isn’t true of Scorsese’s satirical 1983 film about an obsessed fan of New York City TV personality Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) relentlessly pursuing the celebrity in order to get a fast-track ticket to stardom. Here, De Niro is wildly funny in a crushingly bittersweet way; the glimpses of maniacal tendency delivered with a sense of truth and authenticity that, in his later career, too easily fall into caricature.
What The King of Comedy magnifies is De Niro’s capacity to shield the fragilities men often feel obliged to conceal with an aesthetic distraction; here it’s loud cream suits, a silly lampshade moustache and a head full of one-liners.
The New York backdrop is not the only similarity with his Rupert Pupkin and, for example Johnny Boy in Mean Streets or Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Each of these men under Scorsese’s watch and De Niro’s lead are battling agonising inner demons that are dismissed by a destructive mentality and odd compulsions.
Johnny Boy can’t help but antagonise, intermittently bombing mailboxes with homemade devices. Insomniac Bickle throws himself into work. And Pupkin, unable to break into TV through conventional means, kidnaps the host of his favourite show.
None of these men are infallible. They’re damaged souls; impaired by a society they’re on the fringes of, conflicted by crises of identity and fitting in, and bridled by a sense of machismo that doesn’t feel natural to them. You can see glimpses of this in many of De Niro’s roles — not just in Scorsese’s films — but The King of Comedy sees it expressed in the most heart-wrenching way.
Indeed, the poignancy to the humour is so wonderfully understated; Pupkin shouting to his mother from the basement to be quiet when recording jokes to a cassette tape sees De Niro appear almost childlike in his stomping-foot belligerence. The subtle reference to Psycho — Norman Bates’ mother’s ethereal offscreen voice chastising her son — is an amusing aside as well as a handy reminder that Rupert, despite his well-meaning intentions, might have a wire or two out of place.
There’s a touching irony that emerges from his relationship with Masha (Sandra Bernhard), the hapless misfits sharing a penchant for the absurd that is punctuated by Pupkin dismissing his female cohort as desperate, irritating and preoccupied by infatuation; all traits he himself is saddled with.
Masha’s concentrated madness — the devil on Pupkin’s shoulder — acts as the drivetrain to his undeterred but deluded ambition, massaging out the goodwill for plain-faced self-interest. The pair forge an unlikely but potent double-team; the sociopath’s Bonnie and Clyde.
That we care is all on De Niro. He’s perhaps the most sympathetic narcissist of 80s American cinema. He is sad, pathetic, lonely; a socially juvenile adolescent in a greasy 30-year-old body who stalks and kidnaps a celebrity.
And yet he has an intangible lovability. Whether it’s a bit of Peter Pan Complex, Scorsese’s tongue in cheek framing of a haphazard plot to hold a celebrity to ransom, or an earnest De Niro’s gurning self-idolisation, at its heart there’s the pompous bubble of celebrity that our “hero” bursts. We want this sorry case to succeed.
De Niro is responsible for an astonishing range of iconic performances, his talent putting him in an exclusive group of male actors who have left an indelible mark on contemporary American cinema. And while the physical exploits of his method acting approach will continue to see Raging Bull listed amongst his all-time greatest roles just as the legacy of the influential Taxi Driver and groundbreaking The Deer Hunter will remain career-defining highlights, it is in The King of Comedy, where he finds a unique, comically cartoonish pathos, that distinguishes it from all others.
And its underlining quality comes from the actor’s wonderful ability to transcend those machismo traits that gave power to his Jake LaMotta, Jack Walsh, Dwight Hansen and Jimmy “the Gent” Conway (in Raging Bull, Midnight Run, This Boy’s Life and Goodfellas) to find a sort of antidote to an existential crisis.
It’s fitting that Pupkin mentions in his stand-up act that he had an indifferent relationship to his father, that the man seemed to favour his sister because he didn’t like sports but she did, the joke culminating in her growing up to be a perfect son. For an actor often recognised for rugged masculinity and virile bravado, The King of Comedy’s Rupert Pupkin offers a delightfully unassuming diversion.
