This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding French Wikipedia article as of August 31, 2008.

José Giovanni, also known as Joseph Damiani, was a French-Swiss writer and film-maker of Corsican origin. He was born in Paris (France) on June 22, 1923, dying in Lausanne, Switzerland on April 24, 2004 from a brain haemorrhage.[1]

A former criminal who at one time was sentenced to death, Giovanni often drew his inspiration from personal experiences or from real gangsters such as Abel "the mammoth" Danos in his 1960 film Classe tous risques. In his films as well as his novels, he often championed the underworld, as did Auguste Le Breton, while praising masculine friendships and advocating the confrontation of the individual against the world.

Biography

Originally Corsican, José Giovanni was well-educated, studying at the Collège Stanislas de Paris and Lycée Janson de Sailly. He worked at several professions (logger, miner, innkeeper) before becoming a writer and film-maker. Fascinated by climbing, he was also a mountain guide, and during the Second World War was a member of Jacques Faure's Jeunesse et Montagne (Youth and Mountain) group.

Stuck in Prison

In 1945, after the Liberation, he became involved in the scene of the Quartier Pigalle, Paris, and was caught up in a racketeering venture organized by his maternal uncle with the help of his elder brother. The racket turned very bad since three people were murdered. In 1948 Giovanni was sentenced to death (though he had himself killed no-one) along with with an accomplice, Georges Accad. He however narrowly escaped the guillotine when he and Accad's sentences were commuted by President Vincent Auriol to twenty years of hard labour. He was released from prison in December 1956 and was rehabilitated in 1986 after a new trial.

Writing

He wrote his first novel, Le Trou (The Hole), when he was 33 years old. It tells the escape he attempted from prison with other inmates. His lawyer, and writer Roger Nimier read the book to Antoine Blondin and Albert Camus through whom it was published. His style, at times strange and intentionally clumsy, does not fail to surprise the reader with its findings and its strong images, sometimes to the limit of toleration.

In 1958 the editor Marcel Duhamel introduced Giovanni to the Série noire publishing imprint, where he was immediately noticed by the publication of three novels the same year:

• Classe tous risques, which was filmed by Claude Sautet.
• l'Excommunié, which Jean Becker adapted into the film Un nommé La Rocca, and was later remade by Giovanni as La Scoumoune, and starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Claudia Cardinale.
• Le deuxieme souffle (Second Breath), filmed by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1966, with a new adaptation by Alain Corneau in 2007.

Works

• 1957: Le Trou (The Hole)
• 1958: Le Deuxième Souffle (Second Breath)
• 1958: Classe tous risque (Consider All Risks)
• 1958: L'Excommunié
• 1959: Histoire de fou (History of Madness)
• 1960: Les Aventuriers (The Adventurers)
• 1962: Le Haut-Fer (High Fear)
• 1964: Ho!
• 1964: Meurtre au sommet n°866 (Murder on Summit 866')
• 1983: Le Ruffian (The Ruffian)
• 1991: Le Musher
• 1995 : Mon père, il m'a sauvé la vie (My Father Saved My Life)
• La Mort du poisson rouge (The Death of the Goldfish)
• Chemins fauves (Favorite paths)
• Comme un vol de vautours (Like a Flight of Vultures)
• Le pardon du grand Nord (The Forgiveness of the Far North)

See also

• Movies
• Television

References

External Links

• Official Website