Benny Safdie names cinema’s only “perfect” comedy: “It has so many jokes”
When it comes to filmmaking siblings, you could argue that the Coen brothers are at the top of the mountain. However, they’ve had a long time to establish that position. There’s every chance that, in a few years’ time, the Safdie brothers will have displaced them.
Josh and Benny Safdie have made quite the splash with movies like Heaven Knows What, Good Times, and, crucially, Uncut Gems. Paul Thomas Anderson must have been so relieved that somebody else was able to get a decent dramatic performance out of Adam Sandler. Being the only one must have been driving him mad.
After years of success as a duo, both brothers are going solo in 2025. Both Safdies will focus on stories from the world of sport: Josh’s Marty Supreme will be a fictionalised account of the life of table tennis player Marty Reisman, and Benny’s The Smashing Machine is a biopic of UFC legend Mark Kerr. You might have seen the discussion surrounding Dwayne Johnson in the lead role.
Josh’s movie looks like it’s going to have more of a comedic edge, while Benny’s will play things pretty straight. Does this mean that the younger sibling has no taste for the funny stuff? Not according to a 2020 interview with Rotten Tomatoes. When asked about his five favourite movies of all time, Benny named the classic silent comedy City Lights, starring none other than the great Charlie Chaplin.
“It has all of the perfect acting and physical comedy. But then there’s this pathos to that main character that is just so deep, and you feel it, and it has so many jokes,” he explained. “It’s one of his movies that has a lot of good jokes in it, you know, from the boxing to the cigar. Here you have this guy that’s this hobo driving a Rolls-Royce, pushing another hobo out of the way to get the cigar. And it’s just, it’s one of those funny things.”
Released in 1931, City Lights is another entry in the list of great movies to star Chaplin’s signature character, The Tramp. The homeless hero falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl, played by Virginia Cherrill, and aims to use his millionaire friend, played by Harry Myers, to win her affection. As Cherrill wasn’t an actor—Chaplin had allegedly met her at a boxing match—the making of the film was a highly strenuous process. Several scenes took dozens of takes to complete, including one that needed to be redone over 340 times.
The movie was made at a time when silent pictures were being phased out, but Chaplin remained committed to the format that had made him famous. According to Safdie, it’s the film’s lack of dialogue that makes it so special, particularly during its famous final scene. “That ending when you see his face and she sees him at the same time, and there’s kind of, it’s a smile, but is he sad? Is he happy?” the director pondered, “You really have no idea of the complications of what’s going on in the moment.”
Safdie clearly does have an appreciation for comedy, and very old-school comedy at that. Does this mean we’ll see ‘The Rock’ twirling a cane and wearing a bowler hat in his next project? Probably not, but wouldn’t that be something?
