John Bunny - Film's 1st King of Comedy

John Bunny - Film's 1st King of Comedy
A video documentary written and directed by Tony Susnick

Who was John Bunny?

Well, he was an actor who became a very early cinema star. By early, I mean from 1910 to 1915.

I very much enjoy silent movies and have for years, but most of my attention has been to post-1920 product. My notion being that people didn’t really get to making fine quality movies until around then. I know that is just unsupportable laziness. I've never even watched Tillie’s Punctured Romance and I adore Chaplin’s work.

The scenes from Bunny films in the documentary indicate that he shot in a different style. To show his main performance tool, his face, the scenes were all shot in ¾ body, basically their legs are off and we see their upper bodies and faces. This isn’t the Keystone Cops running around with the model Ts doing Hollywood donuts, not that there is anything wrong with that, but this is more chamber work with only up to four people in the frame, tight like that, talking.

The documentary tells us that Bunny was a rather successful stage actor when he went to Vitagraph Studio in Brooklyn and offered himself. He ended up making many films there and achieved the type of fame only accessible through early movies, our first moving picture mass medium.

The film gives us an informative vignette, the story of Vitagraph Studios.

The documentary production is enlivened by some tasteful animation of old stills all done by Tony Susnick himself which besides the content is another indicator that this video is a labor of love.

We hear the words of John Bunny in voiceover. Particularly of interest is the final reading of Bunny’s writing in which he expresses in no uncertain terms an awareness of what he was doing in working in a medium that has the power for the first time ever to transcend time. That was a “Wow” moment for this viewer sitting here 100 years beyond Bunny’s life span watching his mugging shadow. We are the first people to see moving images of our ancestors from over 100 year ago.

The film is narrated by Mark 'Big Poppa' Stampley who does an excellent job with the big voice professional narrator role. Until I checked I kind of thought it was one of the big names who commonly land this sort of gig.

The DVD of the film comes with 4 of Bunny’s films accompanied by Ben Model who has been very active in silent preservation and presentation for years. I don’t have the DVD. I saw the movie on a FACEBOOK video presentation of the movie in celebration of Bunny’s birthday.

Nicely done, with a brisk pace and coming in and less than an hour, this sweet documentary is worth a look for those interested in film history.

Buy the DVD here!