On film, Novello alternated between pompous or fussy professionals and assorted ethnic roles, often as Italian or Hispanic characters. One of his earliest and more familiar film appearances is in the 1945 Laurel and Hardy comedy The Bullfighters, in which Novello plays a Latin restaurateur. Novello was limited mostly to bits in minor films, one of his notable being the officious Spanish consul in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles (1961). Among his other movie credits are roles in such films as Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953), The Mad Magician (1954), Lisbon (1956), The Pride and the Passion (1957), This Rebel Breed (1960), The Lost World (1960), Escape from Zahrain (1962), The Man from the Diner's Club (1963), Sylvia (1965), Harum Scarum (1965), What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966), The Caper of the Golden Bulls (1967), The Comic (1969) and The Domino Principle (1977).