José Giovanni, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

José Giovanni

film director (1923-2004)

Date of Birth: 22-Jun-1923

Place of Birth: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Date of Death: 24-Apr-2004

Profession: screenwriter, writer, film director, novelist, film actor

Nationality: Switzerland, France

Zodiac Sign: Cancer

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.