Romeo Bosetti

• Name — Roméo Bosetti

Bosetti was born the son of Filomena Baresi and Giovanni Bosetti in Chiari, Italy. His parents were part of the circus Baresi (his mother's family), and they traveled a lot, so he was self-educated, especially in French. Originally trained as a circus and music-hall performer as a child, he was beloved for an act featuring trained geese. He also became known in his youth as "roi des casseurs d'assiettes," or "the king of the plate smashers," when he performed in Vaudeville beginning at age 10. He also worked as an acrobat for some of the most prestigious circuses in Europe.

Bosetti and André Deed were both hired from the circus in 1905 as stunt performers for the Pathé comedies, appearing in such films as Dix Femmes pour un Mari (Ten Women for One Husband). They presumably wore dresses to play two of ten women pursuing the same man. They were in other films such as La Course à la Perruque, Vot' permis!... and Viens l'chercher. Bosetti and Deed were known as specialists in the "chase film" (film-poursuite), and Bosetti became among the most famous comedians of his time. He joined Gaumont in 1906, performing in La Course à la perruque (The Wig Chase) with Georges Hatot and André Heuzé. In 1908 he began working for the first woman film director, Alice Guy at Pathé Frères, eventually becoming director of its operation in Nice, France. In 1910 he formed two subsidiaries, Comica films and Nizza, but his service in World War I forced them to disband in 1914. An example of his outrageous, physical, and even bawdy sense of humor is the 1907 film L'homme aimanté (The Magnetized Man) from Gaumont. This synopsis appears in an analysis of his style, resulting in what critic Lisa Trahair calls an "oddly self-exposing little film": Bosetti uses what Trahair calls "symbolic erection[s}" quite clearly in other films as well, notably the 1908 Une dame vraiment bien (A very fine lady), where a woman promenades through Paris inspiring outrageous responses from men, and it includes a scene in which a man holding a water hose wields it phallically. There is no attempt at subtlety. Bosetti uses erotic humor in unapologetically sexualized ways that reflect a certain freedom in French cinema, one he likely would not have enjoyed either back in Italy, or in the United States and Canada. Bosetti is more associated with France than Italy. He is credited for inspiring his colleague Louis Feuillade's 1913 film Fantômas, for which he served as producer, and he pioneered works in burlesque film years before Mack Sennett made it popular in the United States and Canada. He was also known for experiments with animation, such as animated furniture in the film Rosalie et ses meubles fidèles. Objects are also animated in the previously mentioned L'homme aimanté, and he was also a practitioner of early stop-motion animation. He had several nicknames in the industry, including "Romeo Cow-Boy," and the "father of French comedy," for creating some of the earliest films about the American Far West, and for making people laugh at such broad, risqué humor. • Illustration — Barnum, a beloved dog featured in Bosetti's early films. Le Courrier Cinématographique ran two obituaries for Barnum in 1912.

Bosetti married Alice Hervat (1884-1926) on February 19, 1910, in Paris, when he was 31 and she was 25. The birth of a daughter, Juliette Alice (named for her maternal grandmother, but perhaps also as a jest with her father's name), was noted on March 9, 1913 by two of the top French cinema journals. Juliette died in 1972, at age 59. A brother, Alexis Lucien Bosetti, was born in 1905, and it is unclear whether he is the couple's son born five years before their marriage in Paris, Alice's child from a previous relationship, or their son from a 1903 marriage (reported in only one source) that may not have been official, and may have produced one more child. Roméo Bosetti became a French citizen in 1913. He was seriously injured in WWI and ceased acting and directing, but continued to work in film as a producer. He died in 1948 in Suresnes, France, at the age of 69. His hometown of Chiari named a piazza near the municipal cinema and theater in his honor in 2024, inspired by journalist Guerino Lorini, who published a book about him. There is a plan to name a street in Rome for him as well, but it is still at the nomination stage.

As noted above, one of his earliest famous acts with the circus used trained geese. He loved dogs and generally featured one or several in each film. His dog Barnum, a foundling from a traveling circus, was eulogized twice by Le Courrier Cinématographique when it died in June of 1912. About another dog, Médor, who also starred in films including an animal feature, less is known.

Romeo Bosetti is recorded as actor, film director, screenwriter and film producer.