José Giovanni

Who was José Giovanni?

José Giovanni was the pseudonym of Joseph Damiani, a French-Swiss writer and film-maker of Corsican origin.

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" Davos 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.