José Giovanni

Autor, Regie, Darsteller

22. Juni 1923 — 24. April 2004 (80 Jahre)
José Giovanni (22 June 1923, Paris, France – 24 April 2004, Lausanne, Switzerland) was the pseudonym of Joseph Damiani, a French writer and film-maker of Corsican origin who became a naturalized Swiss citizen in 1986.

A former collaborationist and criminal who at one time was sentenced to death, Giovanni often drew his inspiration from personal experience or from real gangsters, such as Abel Danos in his 1960 film Classe tous risques, overlooking that they had been members of the French Gestapo. In his films as well as his novels, while praising masculine friendships and advocating the confrontation of the individual against the world, he often championed the underworld but was always careful to hide his own links with the Nazi occupiers of France during World War II.

Of Corsican descent, Joseph Damiani received a good education, studying at the Collège Stanislas de Paris and the Lycée Janson de Sailly. His father, a professional gambler who was sentenced to a year in prison for running an illegal casino, owned a hotel in the French Alps in Chamonix. Joseph worked there as a young man and became fascinated by mountain climbing.

From April to September 1943 Damiani was a member of Jeunesse et Montagne (Youth and Mountain) in Chamonix, part of the Vichy Government youth movement controlled by Pierre Laval.

In February 1944 Damiani came to Paris and through his father's friend, the LVF leader Simon Sabiani, he joined Jacques Doriot's fascist French Popular Party (PPF). His maternal uncle, Ange Paul Santolini alias "Santos", who ran a restaurant patronized by the Gestapo, and his elder brother, Paul Damiani, a member of the Vichy paramilitary Milice, introduced Joseph into the Pigalle underworld.

In March 1944 Joseph Damiani went to Marseille where he became a member of the German Schutzkorps (SK), an organization which hunted down Service du travail obligatoire - STO (Compulsory Work Service) dodgers. He served as bodyguard to its Marseille chief and took part in many arrests, often blackmailing his victims.

In Lyon, in August 1944, posing as a German police officer along with an accomplice (Orloff, a Gestapo agent who was shot for treason at the Liberation), Damiani blackmailed Joseph Gourentzeig and his brother-in-law Georges Edberg, two Jews who were in hiding. Gourentzeig had bribed a member of the Milice - a friend of Damiani’s – in an attempt to secure his parents' release from a detention camp. They were not freed and Gourentzeig's father, Jacob, was shot by the Germans shortly after, on 21 August 1944, along with 109 Jewish hostages in the Bron (Lyon airport) massacre.

After the Liberation in Paris on 18 May 1945, Joseph Damiani, his brother Paul, Georges Accad, a former Gestapo agent, and Jacques Ménassole, a former member of the Milice wearing a French Army lieutenant's uniform - all posing as Military Intelligence officers - abducted Haïm Cohen, a wine merchant, accusing him of being a black marketeer. He was tortured until he gave them the key to his safe and a check for 105,000 francs. He was then shot and his body thrown into the Seine. Joseph Damiani cashed the check at Barclay's Bank under the identity of "Count J. de Montreuil". ...

Source: Article "José Giovanni" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Filme & Serien auf plex.tv

  • Die Abenteurer
    Die Abenteurer1967

Bekannt aus

  • Das Loch
    Das Loch1960
  • Endstation Schafott
    Endstation Schafott1973
  • Der Clan der Sizilianer
    Der Clan der Sizilianer1969
  • Der Panther wird gehetzt
    Der Panther wird gehetzt1960
  • Die Abenteurer
    Die Abenteurer1967
  • Der zweite Atem
    Der zweite Atem1966
  • Der Mann aus Marseille
    Der Mann aus Marseille1972
  • Der Zigeuner
    Der Zigeuner1975
  • Two Men in Town
    Two Men in Town2014
  • Der Rammbock
    Der Rammbock1983
  • Wie ein Bumerang
    Wie ein Bumerang1976
  • Sieben Tote hat die Woche
    Sieben Tote hat die Woche1963
  • Im Dreck verreckt
    Im Dreck verreckt1968
  • Ho! Die Nummer Eins bin ich
    Ho! Die Nummer Eins bin ich1968
  • Le deuxième souffle
    Le deuxième souffle2007
  • Die großen Schnauzen
    Die großen Schnauzen1965
  • Der Weg ins Paradies
    Der Weg ins Paradies1979
  • Sie nannten ihn Rocca
    Sie nannten ihn Rocca1961
  • Wild C.A.T.S.
    Wild C.A.T.S.1971
  • Verdammt zum Schafott
    Verdammt zum Schafott1981

Filmografie

2014
Two Men in Town · as Screenplay
2007
The Second Wind · as Novel
2001
1988
1985
1983
The Ruffian · as Novel
1981
1979
1977
1976
1975
The Gypsy · as Novel
1974
The Homeless · as Novel
1973
Two Men in Town · as Screenplay
1972
1971
1971
One Way Ticket · as Screenplay
1970
1969
The Sicilian Clan · as Screenplay
1968
Ho! · as Novel
1968
1967
1967
The Last Adventure · as Screenplayauf plex.tv
1966
1966
1966
1963
1960
The Big Risk · as Novel
1960
Le Trou · as Novel

2018
Lino Ventura, la part intime · as Self (archive Footage)
2018
2016
2003
1998
Roll on Sunday · as Self
1998
1987
NPA · as Self
1982
Cinéma cinémas · as Self
1982
Champs-Elysees · as Self
1975
Sunday meetings · as Self
1964

1988
Umi e · as Story 'suna No Bôkensha'
1984
Black Sequence · as Adaptation
1965
The Wise Guys · as Dialogue
1963
Rififi in Tokyo · as Adaptation
1961
Man Called Rocca · as Dialogue
1959
Riff Raff Girls · as Adaptation