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José Giovanni | |
|---|---|
 Giovanni in 2001 | |
| Born | Joseph Damiani (1923-07-22)July 22, 1923 Paris, France |
| Died | April 24, 2004(2004-04-24) (aged 80) |
| Citizenship |
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| Occupations |
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| Writing career | |
| Language | French |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
| Criminal information | |
| Convictions | Murder,collaborationism, blackmail |
| Criminal penalty | Death (commuted), 30 years imprisonment (commuted to 11.5 years total confinement),Dégradation nationale (rehabilitated 1984) |
Joseph Damiani (22 June 1923 – 24 April 2004), known by thepen nameJosé Giovanni, was a French-Swiss writer, filmmaker, and a convicted criminal. He was known for his realistic, grittycrime novels which drew upon his own personal experiences and knowledge of the French underworld.[1]
A formercollaborationist and street criminal who at one time was sentenced to death, Giovanni became a popular author of crime fiction beginning in the 1960s. Several of his novels were adapted to films by directors likeJacques Becker,Jean-Pierre Melville, andClaude Sautet. He also wrote screenplays for several others, and eventually turned to directing, helming some 17 films between 1967 and 2001.
Giovanni's works often praise masculine friendships and advocated the confrontation of the individual against the world. Though he never concealed his criminal past, he was always careful to hide his links with theNazi occupiers of France during World War II. His collaborationism was eventually exposed in 1993 by the Swiss newspapersTribune de Genève and24 Heures.
OfCorsican descent, Joseph Damiani received a good education, studying at theCollège Stanislas de Paris and theLycée 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 inChamonix. Damiani worked there as a young man and became fascinated by mountain climbing.
From April to September 1943, Damiani was a member ofJeunesse et Montagne (Youth and Mountain) in Chamonix, part of theVichy Government youth movement controlled byPierre Laval.
In February 1944, Damiani came to Paris and through his father's friend, theLVF leaderSimon Sabiani, he joinedJacques Doriot's fascistFrench Popular Party (PPF). His maternal uncle, Ange Paul Santolini alias "Santos", who ran a restaurant patronized by theGestapo, and his elder brother, Paul Damiani, a member of the Vichy paramilitaryMilice, introduced Joseph into thePigalle underworld.
In March 1944, Damiani went toMarseille where he became a member of the GermanSchutzkorps (SK), an organization which hunted downService 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.
InLyon, in August 1944, posing as a German police officer along with an accomplice (Orloff, a Gestapo agent who was shot for treason at theLiberation), Damiani blackmailed Joseph Gourentzeig and his brother-in-law Georges Edberg, two Jews who were in hiding. Gourentzeig had bribed a member of theMilice - 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, Damiani, his brother Paul, Georges Accad, a former Gestapo agent, and Jacques Ménassole, a former member of theMilice wearing a French Army lieutenant's uniform - all posing as Military Intelligence officers - kidnapped 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 theSeine. Damiani cashed the check at Barclay's Bank under the identity of "Count J. de Montreuil".
A few days later, on 31 May 1945, the same gang, still masquerading as French Army Intelligence, abducted two brothers, Jules and Roger Peugeot, electrical appliance manufacturers inMaisons-Alfort. The brothers were forced, at gunpoint, to write a letter stating that they had been in business with the Germans and in contact with the Gestapo. The gang then demanded a million francs for destroying the letter. The Peugeot brothers refused and were tortured until they revealed where they had hidden 125Louis d'or gold coins. They were then shot and their bodies buried in the woods nearVersailles.
Damiani, who had accidentally shot himself in the leg during the struggle with the Peugeot brothers, was arrested at home in early June 1945. Accad was also apprehended. On 12 June 1945 Ménassole, on the point of being arrested, committed suicide in theRue Montmartremétro station. Paul Damiani was arrested inStrasbourg in July 1945, escaped in December and was shot dead in a gunfight between gangsters on 17 July 1946 in a bar in Nice.
On 20 July 1946, Damiani was sentenced to twenty years hard labor by the Marseille Court of Justice for his participation in the GermanSchutzkorps and in the arrest of Frenchmen sent to theSTO (Compulsory Work Service) in Germany.
He was also sentenced toDégradation nationale (deprivation of all civil rights) for life for having been a member of thePPF fascist party.
Damiani had admitted during the investigation that he had shot Roger Peugeot, but he denied it in court. Tried by the ParisCour d'Assises, Georges Accad and Damiani were sentenced to death on 10 July 1948 for the premeditated murders of Haïm Cohen, Roger Peugeot and Jules Peugeot. Damiani escaped theguillotine when his and Accad's sentences were commuted by PresidentVincent Auriol on 3 March 1949 to hard labor for life.
On 25 May 1949 Damiani was sentenced by the Paris Correctional Tribunal to ten years imprisonment for having blackmailed at gunpoint Joseph Gourentzeig (hiding from the Gestapo under the name "André Courent") and his brother-in-law Georges Edberg in Lyon on 11 August 1944.
On 14 November 1951, Damiani's sentence was reduced to twenty years hard labor. Finally, PresidentRené Coty remitted the sentence on 30 November 1956 and Damiani was released from prison at the age of thirty-three on 4 December 1956 after serving eleven and a half years.
Straight after his release from prison, Damiani wrote his first novel,The Break (Le Trou), under the name of"José Giovanni". It tells of the escape he attempted from prison with four other inmates by digging a tunnel from their cell into the Paris sewers in 1947 when he was awaiting trial for murder. His lawyer, who had encouraged him to write, took the book to author and editorRoger Nimier through whom it was published byÉditions Gallimard. His style, at times uncouth and clumsy, can surprise the reader with its strong and sometimes disturbing scenes. The novel was turned into afilm byJacques Becker in 1960.
In 1958 the editorMarcel Duhamel introduced Giovanni to theSérie noire publishing imprint, where he came to notice with the publication of three novels that same year:
José Giovanni wrote twenty-one novels and a volume of memoirs(Mes Grandes Gueules). He often drew his inspiration from personal experience or from real gangsters, such as Abel Danos in his 1960 filmClasse tous risques, overlooking that they had been members of theFrench Gestapo.
After having worked with Jacques Becker on the adaptation ofThe Break, Giovanni wrote thirty-three film scripts and directed fifteen movies.
In January 1984, Giovanni was declared "rehabilitated", which did not absolve him - there was no retrial - but restored his civil rights.
During his lifetime, Giovanni never gave a clear explanation for his death sentence, though he took pride in being a former gangster and having been on death row. However, he never mentioned that he had been convicted for Collaborationism with theNazis or for extorting money from Jews during the Occupation.
On 14 October 1993, two Swiss dailies,LaTribune de Genève and24 Heures, revealed his past and that Giovanni was in fact the same person as Joseph Damiani, the convicted fascist militant. At first Giovanni denied the accusations, claiming he had helped theRésistance and then insisting that he had been sentenced to death for a crime that had nothing to do with Collaborationism. He threatened to sue the press for slander but never did. Finally, he stated :"I've paid. I am entitled to forgiveness and oblivion".
Giovanni defended right-wing values, the family, law and order and tougher punishment but was a staunch opponent of the death penalty. However, he believed in personal vengeance:"Any man that snatches a child from its mother's arms deserves death".
In his last years he spent time visiting prisons lecturing on crime and rehabilitation. His final film,Mon père, il m'a sauvé la vie, was autobiographical of his war years and places the responsibility for the murders with his uncle Ange Paul Santolini.
From 1968 on, he lived in the Swiss village ofMarécottes, not far from Chamonix. He became a naturalized Swiss citizen in 1986. He died from a brain haemorrhage on 24 April 2004 inLausanne.
In July 2013, nine years after his death, historian and publisher Franck Lhomeau published in the journalTemps Noir a summary of the various cases that led to Giovanni's convictions, as well as an interview with writer/filmmakerBertrand Tavernier, who had been his longtime press agent.
In 2024, writer and historian Gilles Antonowicz publishedJosé Giovanni, Story of a Redemption, which revisits Giovanni's criminal past and attempts to place the events in their historical context.
[FD] : film director, [Sc] : screenwriter, [DW] :dialogue writer, [Wr] : writer of the original novel
