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PlayTime (1967)
7.8/10on IMDb
Released
Jacques Tati built a whole glass-and-steel Paris for this film, a set with its own power plant, then filled it with jokes so small and so far from the camera that you miss half of them the first time. Dialogue is reduced to background murmur, Monsieur Hulot drifts in and out as one figure among many, and the comedy comes from people politely failing to cope with modern buildings.
It plays less like a sketch show than like watching a vast, silent piece of clockwork. See it on the biggest screen you can: Tati shot it on 70 mm film, and the gags live at the edges of the frame.
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Being There (1979)
7.9/10on IMDb
Released
Peter Sellers plays Chance, a gardener whose knowledge of the world comes entirely from television, and he plays him with total, unblinking sincerity. Washington's powerful mistake his remarks about the garden for deep wisdom, and the film never nudges you to laugh: it lets each misunderstanding sit until it turns absurd.
Sellers was nominated for Best Actor, and Melvyn Douglas won Best Supporting Actor as the wealthy man who takes Chance into his confidence. Pick this if you like satire that keeps a perfectly straight face from first scene to last.
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Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
The film that set the template for American indie deadpan. Jim Jarmusch shot each scene in a single long take with no standard coverage and cut between them with stretches of black screen, so every joke arrives, hangs in the air and then vanishes into darkness.
Three bored people drift from New York to Cleveland and beyond, and nothing much happens anywhere, which is exactly the point. It won the Caméra d'Or for debut films at Cannes in 1984 and is preserved in the National Film Registry. Start here to find out whether you have the patience for the slower films on this list.
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Rushmore (1998)
7.6/10on IMDb
Released
Jason Schwartzman, in his film debut, plays Max Fischer, a 15-year-old scholarship student at a prestigious academy who announces his absurd schemes in the solemn tone of a company chairman. Bill Murray, as a lonely industrialist, answers him with a hangdog stillness that became his signature in the years that followed.
Wes Anderson's symmetrical framing does much of the joke work, presenting ridiculous behavior with complete formal seriousness. This is the warmest film here and the easiest way in if subtitles or slow pacing put you off the others.
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Kikujiro (1999)
7.7/10on IMDb
Released
Takeshi Kitano directs himself as Kikujiro, an idle former yakuza sent to escort a young boy who is searching for his mother during the summer vacation. Kitano's face barely moves, and much of the comedy comes from that impassive stare meeting a child's long, aimless summer days.
Gags are staged in still, wide shots, often with the punchline happening at a distance, while Joe Hisaishi's gentle score keeps the mood sweet rather than bleak. It runs about two hours and drifts from episode to episode, so treat it as a road movie with jokes rather than a joke machine.
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Ghost World (2001)
7.3/10on IMDb
Released
Thora Birch's Enid meets the empty summer after high school graduation with a stare so flat it becomes a weapon, and Scarlett Johansson's Rebecca matches her shrug for shrug. Steve Buscemi, as the lonely record collector Seymour, gives the film its sad, dry center.
Based on Daniel Clowes's comic, it earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The laughs come from contempt delivered quietly, and the mood turns melancholy as the friendship frays, so expect a comedy that ends on a low, open note rather than a punchline.
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Whisky (2004)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
Jacobo owns a struggling sock factory in Uruguay, and when his brother comes to visit, he asks his employee Marta to pretend to be his wife. That is the whole setup, and directors Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll play it with almost no expression at all, building the film from repeated routines until a tiny change in one feels like a major event.
It won the Prix du Regard Original in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2004. If you love Kaurismäki, this is his closest relative on the list. It was Rebella's last film; he died in 2006.
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Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
7.0/10on IMDb
Released
Jon Heder's Napoleon speaks in exasperated mumbles, and the film around him is just as unhurried: rural Idaho, static shots and characters who treat a high school class presidency campaign with total seriousness. Made for about $400,000 and filmed at Preston High School and around Franklin County, it premiered at Sundance in January 2004.
The humor is awkward rather than cruel, and it works because nobody on screen ever acknowledges how strange they are. It is the most quotable film here and the shortest wait for a laugh.
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Broken Flowers (2005)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
Bill Murray's Don Johnston receives an anonymous letter saying he has a son, then sets off to visit former girlfriends played by Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton. Murray barely changes expression from house to house, and Jim Jarmusch lets each awkward reunion run on in a silence that gets funnier the longer it lasts.
It won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2005. Choose this over Stranger Than Paradise if you want the same director's patience with a big star at its center and a little more plot to hold on to.
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12:08 East of Bucharest (2006)
7.3/10on IMDb
Released
Sixteen years after the 1989 revolution, a small Romanian town's local TV station puts on a call-in talk show to settle one question: did the town take part in the revolution at all? Roughly half the film is that broadcast, played out in a one-camera studio, as guests contradict each other and callers from the town dismantle every heroic claim.
Corneliu Porumboiu's debut won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 2006, and it shows how deadpan can make a solemn national story very funny. It runs about 89 minutes and needs no knowledge of Romanian history beyond that premise.
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A Serious Man (2009)
7.0/10on IMDb
Released
Michael Stuhlbarg's Larry Gopnik, a physics professor in 1967 Minnesota, learns his wife is leaving him and then watches the rest of his life come apart, responding mostly with pained politeness. The Coen brothers stack misfortune on misfortune and let the colleagues, neighbors and rabbis he turns to answer with riddles and shrugs delivered completely straight.
It was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. This is the darkest laugh on the list, and it refuses to explain itself, so pick it when you want a comedy that leaves you uneasy.
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A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)
6.9/10on IMDb
Released
Roy Andersson builds his films from interlinked sketches, each staged as one static frame of pale, gloomy people in drab rooms, and here two traveling salesmen keep failing to sell their joke-shop novelties: vampire teeth, a laughing bag and a monster mask. The camera never moves to help you, so you search the frame for the gag while the characters just stand there.
It completes the trilogy begun with Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living, and it won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2014. Funny and bleak in equal measure, with a few sequences that turn genuinely dark, it suits viewers who like their laughter dry enough to sting.
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The Lobster (2015)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
In Yorgos Lanthimos's near future, single people check into a hotel where they must find a partner within 45 days or be turned into an animal. Colin Farrell and the cast deliver every line in the same flat, affectless register, which makes the hotel's absurd rules sound all the more reasonable and all the more ridiculous.
It won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2015 and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Once the story moves out into the woods it grows colder and crueler, so this one is for viewers who like their deadpan with real menace underneath.
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Toni Erdmann (2016)
7.3/10on IMDb
Released
Peter Simonischek plays Winfried, a prankster father who slips in a set of fake teeth and turns into his alter ego Toni Erdmann to needle, and perhaps rescue, his driven consultant daughter Ines, played by Sandra Hüller. Neither of them ever admits how strange the situation is, so the embarrassment builds over long, unbroken scenes until it becomes almost unbearably funny.
Maren Ade's film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It runs 162 minutes, so treat it as a whole evening rather than something to squeeze in.
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Deerskin (2019)
6.6/10on IMDb
Released
Jean Dujardin plays Georges, a man who buys a fringed deerskin jacket and becomes completely, calmly obsessed with it. Quentin Dupieux, who also shot and edited the film, treats each step of that obsession as though it were perfectly sensible, and Adèle Haenel plays along with an eerie matter-of-factness.
At 77 minutes it is the shortest film here. The humor is absurd and the obsession eventually tips into crime, so it suits viewers who find straight-faced madness funnier than any gag.
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It Must Be Heaven (2019)
6.9/10on IMDb
Released
Elia Suleiman plays himself, a Palestinian filmmaker who travels abroad and finds the oddities of home following him wherever he goes. He hardly says a word, watching each scene with the patient blankness of a silent-film comic, and the jokes are carefully framed tableaux of strange behavior that he simply observes.
It received a Special Mention from the main competition jury at Cannes in 2019, along with the FIPRESCI prize. Pick it if you like comedy that doubles as a quiet political essay, delivered without a single raised voice.
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Fallen Leaves (2023)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Aki Kaurismäki's 20th feature is a romance between two lonely Helsinki workers, played by Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen, who meet in a karaoke bar and keep losing each other through lost phone numbers and plain bad luck. Everyone speaks in clipped, expressionless lines, and the jokes are so dry you might take them for sadness until you laugh.
It won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2023. If you try only one Kaurismäki, make it this one: it is short, tender and the clearest demonstration of how much feeling a blank face can carry.
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