dromasca

They say that to assess the skills of a director, it is good to see not only his best films, but also those that for one reason or another failed with the public or in the eyes of critics. 'Les innocents aux mains sales' (English distribution title is 'Dirty Hands') from 1975 is not considered among Claude Chabrol's best films. It is a 'film noir', the story of a marriage in crisis and of a murder that does not go as planned, with a story that reserves many surprises for the audience throughout the two hours of screening. Apparently, Chabrol seems to have tried to make a classic passion thriller, but his ambitions and obsessions are, as usual, far beyond the crime story.

Julie, a woman as beautiful as Romy Schneider, is married to Louis, a businessman 18 years older than her. The couple lives in a villa on the Côte d'Azur, after the husband has retired from business. The two have separate rooms and do not have intimate relations. Is Louis impotent because of the heart disease that led him to retire or because of excessive alcohol consumption or maybe just because the passion, if it ever existed, has died out? The fact is that Louis is drunk most of the time, while Julie is bored enough to start a relationship with Jeff, a neighbor who is an unsuccessful writer. Julie and Jeff plan to kill Louis and camouflage the crime as an accident. Plans of this kind generally do not work out, and in this case too, many surprising events will follow, with the reappearance of characters considered missing, with love flames that die out and reignite, with a talkative lawyer who manages to get his client suspected of murder out of trouble, and with two detectives who guess pretty much everything that is happening but never have any evidence.

Julie is the only female character in the film, I have the impression that no other woman appears in any frame in 'Les innocents aux mains sales' apart from her. The role of a beautiful, single woman who has to survive in a world of men, with laws written for men and enforced by men, suits Romy Schneider perfectly. At 37, she was at the peak of her beauty and already after over 20 years of career. The film is well written, the story flows smoothly and there are enough twists and turns to keep the audience's interest constantly awake. Chabrol explores here again the mystery of female psychology and, as in many of his other films, does not serve the audience with solutions on a platter, leaving them to decide for themselves: who does Julie really love? How guilty is she? Two formidable scenes stays in my memory. One of them begins with a close-up of the heroine, who is cornered by two investigators who ask her aggressive questions and insinuate that she is an accomplice in the murder. The frame gradually widens to include the two policemen and the lone woman, confronting them, between them. The second memorable scene is that of the investigation at the examining magistrate, in which the wonderful actor who was Jean Rochefort gives a real recital. It is, I think, one of the best scenes of his career. I was less thrilled with the other male roles in the film, including that of Louis played by Rod Steiger. Chabrol seems to have been less inspired than usual in his casting this time. Even though the production is not the best, there are enough interesting moments in 'Les innocents aux mains sales' for which the film is still worth seeing today.