Romeo Bosetti

Roméo Giuseppe Bosetti was an Italian-born French cinematographer, actor, and early film impresario known for comedy, burlesque, mime, and hilariously provocative visual humor. As one of the earliest pioneers of animation and slapstick, he had an enormous influence on global filmmakers, notably Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin. His experiments with trick photography in the 1912 film Le garde-meubles automatique inspired poet Vachel Lindsay's 1915 essay "The Motion Picture of Fairy Splendor." For his service and wounding in World War I, he was a recipient of the French Croix de Guerre (1914-1918). In 1913 he was made an Officier des Palmes Académiques, France's oldest order of merit.