José Giovanni

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
José Giovanni (2001)

José Giovanni (born June 22, 1923 in Paris , † April 24, 2004 in Lausanne ) is the pseudonym of the French-Swiss writer and filmmaker Joseph Damiani .

Giovanni wrote a total of 20 novels, 33 screenplays and two memory books and made 15 films and five TV plays. Jean Gabin , Alain Delon and Lino Ventura played in his films . François de Roubaix, who died early, wrote the music for many of José Giovanni's films . Similar to Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone , this synthesis between film and music has produced some masterpieces.

Life

As a teenager he worked as a mountain guide . During the Second World War Damiani was from April to September 1943 the Jeunesse et Montagne , which was part of the youth movement of the Vichy regime under the leadership of Pierre Laval. In February 1944 Damiani came to Paris and joined Jacques Doriot 's fascist French Popular Party (PPF) through a friend of his father ' s . Damiani's uncle, Ange Paul Damiani, called "Santos", who ran a pub under the protection of the Gestapo, and an older brother of Damiani, Paul Damiani, who was a member of the Vichy paramilitary unit Milice , introduced him to the Pigalle underworld . In March 1944 he went to Marseille, where he became a member of the German Protection Corps. In August 1944 Damiani worked in Lyon as a police officer in the service of the Vichy regime, where he blackmailed two Jewish citizens (Joseph Gourentweise and his brother-in-law Georges Edberg) who had been able to hide from Nazi persecution until then. After Paris was liberated on May 18, 1945, Joseph Damiani formed a gang together with his brother Paul, a former Gestapo man and an ex-member of the Milice, which kidnapped and tortured several people in order to extort money from them , and killed. They killed the Jewish wine merchant Haïm Cohen and threw his body into the Seine, Damiani cashed the check for the extorted money over 100,000 francs at Barkley's Bank under a pseudonym. A few days later, the gang forced Jules and Roger Peugeot, two electricians, to write a letter in which they admit that they had collaborated with the Gestapo, and in doing so they pressed money from them. They were also killed and their bodies buried in the woods near Versailles. Damiani was later sentenced to 20 years in a labor camp and sentenced to death in another trial for involvement in the three murders. The sentence was overturned and Damiani was released after 12 years in prison. When he began to write books and scripts, in which he also incorporated his experience as a criminal, he adopted the name Jose Giovanni and a past as a fighter in the French Resistance . In the last years of his life, under pressure from evidence, he finally admitted to having been part of the Vichy regime. He was involved in prison work and the fight against juvenile delinquency . His books and films are characterized by an affirmative attitude towards violence, including police violence (such as in Der Kommissar und seine decoy). Damiani was on the right politically until his death.

In the FRG, his contribution to the crime series Der Alte, filmed in 1976 and broadcast in 1977, caused a real scandal, as the detective here convicted the perpetrator with unfair means. Police unions protested, ZDF had to justify itself. Swiss television and Austrian radio did not show the episode at all, and it remained blocked for longer on ZDF and was left out when it was repeated. It was not until the series was repeated on 3sat in 2003 that the episode could be seen again for the first time. Giovanni was supposed to make a second contribution to the crime series, but it did not materialize due to the police protests at The Old Man Beats Twice .

Filmography

Director

  • 1967 - revenge is not just a word (La loi du survivant)
  • 1968 - Die in the dirt (also: Stranger, where are you going?) (Le Rapace)
  • 1970 - The inspector and his decoy (Dernier domicile connu)
  • 1970 - Wild CATS (Un aller simple)
  • 1971 - What happened to Tom? (Où est passé Tom?)
  • 1972 - The Man from Marseille (La Scoumoune)
  • 1973 - Scaffold terminus (Deux hommes dans la ville)
  • 1975 - The Gypsy (Le Gitan)
  • 1976 - Like a boomerang (Comme un boomerang)
  • 1976 - The old man : The old man strikes twice (episode 3 of the crime series with Siegfried Lowitz)
  • 1979 - The way to paradise (Les égouts de paradis)
  • 1980 - A black robe for the murderer (also: Verdammt zum Schafott) (Une robe noire pour un tueur)
  • 1983 - The Battering Ram (Le Ruffian)
  • 1984 - The Weekend Killer (Le tueur de Dimanche) (Movie made for TV)
  • 1986 - Among the wolves (Les Loups entre eux)
  • 1987 - The she-wolf (also: The fight of a mother) (La Louve , also: La peche aux Anges) (TV movie)
  • 1988 - My Friend the Traitor (Mon ami le traitre)
  • 1991 - L'Irlandaise (TV movie)
  • 1996 - Crime à l'altimètre (TV movie)
  • 2000 - My father (Mon père, il m'a sauvé la vie)

Scripts for films by other directors

Literary templates

  • 1960 - The Hole (Le Trou) - Director: Jacques Becker
  • 1965 - The big snouts (Les grandes gueules) - Director: Robert Enrico
  • 1966 The Adventurers (Les Aventuriers) - Director: Robert Enrico
  • 1968 - Ho! - Directed by Robert Enrico

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franck Lhomeau: Joseph Damiani, also known as José Giovanni . In: Joseph Damiani, alias José Giovanni by Franck Lhomeau in Temps noir, la Revue des Littératures Policières N ° 16, September 2013. (Ed.): Lire le noir . Éditions de la Bibliothèque publique d'information, ISBN 978-2-910686-65-9 , p. 53-102 , doi : 10.4000 / books.bibpompidou.108 .
personal data
SURNAME Giovanni, José
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French-Swiss writer and filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 2004
Place of death Lausanne