Camillo De Riso

Camillo De Riso (1854-1924) was an Italian actor and director of the Italian stage and silent screen. He was famous for his comic acting and directing at the film companies Ambrosio, Gloria and Caesar.


Italian postcard by Magazine Film - Corriere dei cinematografici, Napoli/Roma. Photo: L. Roseo & Co, Naples / Caesar Film.


Spanish cromo (collector card) by Chocolate Imperial, no. 2 of 10. Photo: Bertini Film / Caesar Film / Distr. J. Gurgui, Barcelona. Camillo De Riso in L'accidia / Acedia (Alfredo De Antoni, 1919), released in Spain as Pereza. L'accidia / Acedia is a part of the series I sette peccati capitali / The Seven Mortal Sins starring Francesca Bertini.


Italian postcard by Puccini Bromografico, Milano, no. 7466. Photo: Varischi Artico / Caesar Film, Roma. The Caesar Film actors Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena and Camillo De Riso and director Giuseppe De Liguoro. Apparently, the one who added the names on the card didn't know who Serena or De Liguoro were, as their names were misplaced.


Spanish chromo (collector card) by Chocolat Imperiale, no. 8. Photo: Bertini Film / Caesar Film / Distr. J. Gurgui, Barcelona. Camillo De Riso in the Italian silent film La gola (Camillo De Riso, 1918), one of the series I sette peccati capitali / The Seven Mortal Sins, based on the novel Les sept pêchés capitaux (1847-1852) by Eugène Sue.


Italian postcard by La Rotofotografica / Unione Cinematografica Italiana, no. 80.

The gay epicure and shameless libertine Camillo

Camillo De Riso was born in Naples in 1854. He was the son of Alfonso De Riso, a stage actor who was most popular in the 19th century. In the early years of the 20th century, Camillo started his career in his father's theatre company. Then he founded his own company, with Giuseppe Sichel and Giuseppe Brignone.

In 1912 he was hired by Ambrosio Film in Turin. There he formed a successful trio with Gigetta Morano and Eleuterio Rodolfi, contributing with his rotund face, small size and generous look as the bourgeois bonhomme. The trio appeared in such short silent films as Un successo diplomatico (1913) and L’oca alla Colbert (1913), both directed by Rodolfi. The films of the trio were often based on Italian and French 'fin de siecle pochades', and they grew in length over the years.

In late 1913, De Riso started to work at the Gloria company. Here he created the gay epicure and shameless libertine character of ‘Camillo’, and directed himself in a series of short comedies between 1913 and 1914. He also performed roles in feature films, such as the theatre impresario Schaudard in Lyda Borelli’s debut film Ma l’amor mio non muore / Love Everlasting (Mario Caserini, 1913), and as the unfortunate Giuliano Barbet in Florette e Patapon (Mario Caserini, 1913), an adaptation of the famous pochade by Maurice Hennequin and Pierre Véber.

While De Riso also acted in epics and thrillers such as Caserini’s films Nerone e Agrippina / Nero and Agrippina (Mario Caserini, 1913) and Il treno degli spettri / The Ghost Train (Mario Caserini, 1913) starring Mario Bonnard, he more and more specialised in comedy.

As a comedian, he played either the lead in comedies or the sidekick in dramas. At Gloria, he was also director, starting with the comedies Somnambulismo / Sleepwalking (1913) and Romanticismo / Romance (1913), and stayed there until 1915. In 1914, De Riso briefly worked for the small Rome-based company Latium Film, where he directed and acted in an adaptation of Émile Zola’s 'Nana' (1914).


Italian postcard by Magazine Film - Corriere dei cinematografici, Napoli/Roma. Photo: L. Roseo & Co, Naples / Caesar Film.


Spanish minicard by Reclam Films, Mallorca, no. 4. Photo: Gloria Film. Lyda Borelli and Camillo De Riso in the Italian silent film Ma l'amor mio non muore / Love Everlasting (Mario Caserini, 1913), Borelli's screen debut.


Spanish cromo (collector card) by Chocolate Salas-Sabadell, Barcelona, no. 5 of 6 cards. Photo: Caesar Film. Francesca Bertini, Camillo De Riso and Alfredo De Antoni in Andreina (Gustavo Serena, 1917), based on the play 'Andréa' (1873) by Victorien Sardou, adapted by Giuseppe Paolo Pacchierotti.


Spanish chromo (collector card) by Chocolat Imperiale, no. 5 of 10. Photo: Bertini Film / Caesar Film / Distr. J. Gurgui, Barcelona. Francesca Bertini, Camillo De Riso and Livio Pavanelli in the Italian silent film La gola (Camillo De Riso, 1918), one of the series I sette peccati capitali / The Seven Mortal Sins, based on the novel Les sept pêchés capitaux (1847-1852) by Eugène Sue.


Spanish cromo (collector card) by Chocolate Imperial, no. 6 of 10. Photo: Bertini Film / Caesar Film / Distr. J. Gurgui, Barcelona. Camillo De Riso and possibly Guido Trento in L'accidia / Acedia (Alfredo De Antoni, 1919), released in Spain as Pereza. Part of the series I sette peccati capitali / The Seven Mortal Sins with Francesca Bertini.

A new turn

From 1915 on, Camillo De Riso’s career took a new turn. He started working at the Caesar Film company in Rome. Here he continued his Camillo comedies, well into the early 1920s. He also acted in a long series of films with diva Francesca Bertini.

At Caesar, Bertini had a quite fixed cast around her, including De Riso, Gustavo Serena, Olga and Carlo Benetti, Alfredo De Antoni, and Giuseppe De Liguoro. The men of this group often also functioned as directors as well, including De Riso. Titles include La signora delle camelie / Lady of the Camellias (Gustavo Serena, 1915), La perla del cinema / The Cinema Star (Giuseppe De Liguoro, 1916), Baby l'indiavolata / My Little Baby (Giuseppe De Liguoro, 1916), Odette (Giuseppe De Liguoro, 1916), Andreina (Gustavo Serena, 1917) and Mariute (Edoardo Bencivenga, 1918).

For the film series I sette peccati capitali / The Seven Moral Sins (several directors, 1918-1919), Camillo De Riso directed the episode La gola / The Throat (Camillo De Riso, 1918). He also directed Spiritismo / Spiritism (Camillo De Riso, 1919). De Riso also directed other popular actresses of the late 1910s such as Leda Gys in La principessa /The Princess (Camillo De Riso, 1917), which he also scripted.

He also directed Tilde Kassay in Niniche (Camillo De Riso, 1918), I nostri buoni villici / Our Good Villagers(Camillo De Riso, 1918), La figlia unica / The Only Child (Camillo De Riso, 1919), and Una donna funesta / Nanà (Camillo De Riso, 1919), and Elena Lunda in Una donna, una mummia, un diplomatico / A Woman, a Mummy, a Diplomat (Camillo De Riso, 1920), but in the early 1920s De Riso mostly directed his own Camillo comical shorts, and he even did a parody of William Shakespeare’s 'Otello' in 1920, which the press didn’t like.

De Riso played memorable parts in A San Francisco (Gustavo Serena, 1915), Don Giovanni (Edoardo Bencivenga, 1916), the Victorien Sardou adaptation Ferréol (Edoardo Bencivenga, 1916), and lastly, in Occupati d’Amelia / Occupied by Amelia (Telemaco Ruggeri, 1923), an adaptation of a famous Georges Feydeau boulevard comedy, starring Pina Menichelli and Marcel Lévesque. Camillo De Riso contributed to over 100 films, mostly comedies, and directed some 65 films, until his premature death in Rome in 1924.


Spanish chromo (collector card) by Chocolat Imperial, no. 6 of 18. Photo: Caesar Films / J. Gurgui, Barcelona. Tilde Kassay and Gustavo Serena in Una donna funesta / Nanà (Camillo De Riso, 1917-1919).


Italian postcard by La Rotofotografica, no. 4. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana, Rome.


Italian postcard by La Rotofotografica, no. 34. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana, Rome.


Italian postcard by La Rotofotografica, no. 99. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana, Rome.


Italian postcard by Ed. Vettori, Bologna, no. 41.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, Wikipedia (Italian), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 2 August 2026.