A film can have a great opening, only for the rest to be disappointing and anti-climactic compared with it. An example of this can be found in Innocents with Dirty Hands, a.k.a. Dirty Hands, a 1975 French crime thriller directed by Claude Chabrol.
The film is based on The Damned Innocents, a 1971 novel by American writer Richard Neeley (whose 1970 film The Plastic Nightmare later served as the basis for the 1991 film Shattered). The plot is set in St. Tropez, a picturesque town on the French Riviera known as a popular vacation spot for the rich. Among them is Julie Wormser (played by Romy Schneider), an attractive woman who feels comfortable sunbathing in the nude. One day, a kite from a neighbouring house flies right down to her posterior, and a young man (played by Paolo Giusti) comes to pick it up. The man is Jeff Marle, a struggling writer who begins a torrid affair with Julie. Her enthusiasm is somewhat understandable because her husband Louis (played by Rod Steiger) happens to be eighteen years her senior, impotent and drunk. It doesn’t take long before Julie and Jeff begin plotting Louis’ demise. One night, an elaborate plan that involves creating alibis and making the whole thing look like an accident is put into motion. But after the fateful night, Julie can’t get in touch with Jeff; someone has apparently drained her husband’s bank accounts, thus leaving her penniless. To make things worse, the police investigating the whole affair appear to be connecting the dots very quickly and blaming Julie for the mysterious disappearance of her husband.
Claude Chabrol enjoys a reputation as one of the greatest misanthropes of French and world cinema due to his ability to use the medium of the crime thriller for keen and caustic observations about hypocrisy and various forms of dysfunction within the French bourgeoisie. There is relatively little social commentary in Dirty Hands, except for those who might describe Chabrol as some kind of feminist due to his portrayal of Julie who, as the only female character in the film, suffers all kinds of explicit and implicit sexist comments or even serious mistreatment by almost any male she encounters. But the content in the film seems subservient to the style. Emphasis on strong visuals can be seen not only in the exotic beauty of Romy Schneider, but also in the interior design of the Wormsers’ luxurious home and the Yves Saint Laurent dresses Schneider wears in the scenes in which she is not naked.
While the visuals are strong, Dirty Hands suffers from poor music by Pierre Jansen which, together with its glacial pace, would make this film very challenging for today’s viewers or those unaccustomed to Chabrol. There are also issues with Chabrol’s script that uses its main plot twist at the halfway point, only to serve another, less convincing, twist near the ending, which makes the plot seem quite convoluted. The impression is saved by an excellent cast, most notably Schneider who enthusiastically takes a seemingly thankless role and delivers a strong performance by playing a woman who goes through various transformations – from seductress to killer to victim and, finally, to someone with a conscience. Her work is well-matched by Rod Steiger who, sadly, doesn’t appear much in the film. Italian actor Paolo Giusti, on the other hand, lacks chemistry with Schneider. The supporting cast is very good, especially Jean Rochefort in a brilliant miniature as a cynical defence attorney. In the end, Dirty Hands is a solid but still very disappointing film. Chabrol himself seemed to agree with that assessment and called this film “a curiosity.”
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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