Dillo Lombardi

Biography

A Parma winter brought Dillo Lombardi into the world on 10 January 1858; by the time the cameras began to turn he had already traded the quiet Emilian streets for the flicker of the early Italian screen. Lombardi commanded both sides of the lens—steering the brooding Malacarne in 1918, animating the uncanny marionette of La bambola vivente seven years later, and resurrecting Tolstoy’s tormented spirit for The Living Corpse back in 1913. Fame never uprooted him: he died where many retirees seek the Lazio sun, in Civita Castellana, on 15 July 1935.