Movie Review: Innocents With Dirty Hands (1975)

By Daniel Dessinger

April 12, 2008

Innocents With Dirty Hands (1975) (Les Innocents aux mains sales) is another Claude Chabrol crime thriller with familiar plot elements: a young and gorgeous woman married to a man much richer than herself; the sea and the confrontation in a boat, etc.

The film features two mega stars: Lovely Romy Schneider as Julie Wormser and volatile Rod Steiger as her impotent but rich husband Louis Wormser.

Add to that the young stud-next-door Jeff Marle (acted by Paolo Giusti), and you've got yourself a classic explosive triangle that does not fail to produce some deadly fireworks.

A transparent plot ploy that Chabrol uses in this film is the detective couple Commissaire Lamy (François Maistre) and Commissaire Villon (Pierre Santini).

Why do we need these two Commissaires? So that they can talk endlessly among themselves and over delicious French food and tell us what's going on.

It's exposition of the most blatant kind and a rather weak crutch for a director with as developed a visual sense as Chabrol.

But Chabrol exonerates himself in the very last scene where he uses a certain visual element (which I will not disclose) which is as unforgettable as a similar element used in the very last scene of the Antonioni classic L'Eclisse (1962).

That's one scene which speaks volumes of the incomparable power of "motion pictures" and how indeed a picture is worth a thousand words.

Yet the problem is to find that one appropriate image in a proverbial haystack of infinite visual possibilities.

To find that perfect image which not only underlines a plot point but also reveals a character's spiritual truth and predicament takes a special kind of genius. And Chabrol, just like Antonioni or all the other legendary directors and writers of the silver screen, has that "golden touch" in spades.