Assassinato por Amor

Innocents with Dirty Hands is an unabashedly ludicrously contrived yet not exactly boring thriller, with an investigation that would have been cracked in ten minutes by Inspector Clouseau, albeit one featuring one of the sexiest (and most talented) French performers of the period in Romy Schneider (she gives the "real" by that I mean best performance in this, better than the material might deserve), luxurious San Tropez locations, plus there is some inventive camerawork and a couple of transitions that sparked my interest.

I actually got more on board with the story once it takes its major turn midway through, and it feels like Chabrol gets to have some pulpy enjoyment turning the screws on our expectations on a marriage and I can't stress enough if you got to have this kind of wackadoodle masculine (and feminine) headtrip, get Steiger and his insense ass. And it occurs to me this is one of the very few movies that you couldn't realistically make today, not because of cell phones but because of Viagra and Cialis. But, if that's what you gotta do to get it up, then...

In Saint Tropez, Julie Wormser (Romy Schneider) is a beautiful and sexy young woman married with the wealthy retired businessman Louis Wormser (Rod Steiger), who is eighteen years old older than she and infatuated on her. Louis is impotent since he has had a heart attack, alcoholic and drinking too much. When Julie meets her handsome neighbor Jeff Marle (Paolo Giusti), a mediocre writer that likes to fly kite, they have a love affair. They plot the assassination of Louis and build an alibi for Jeff. During the night, Julie hits Louis head with a cudgel while he is sleeping, and Jeff takes his body to his yacht to dump into the sea. Then he travels to Italy in Julie's Datsun to have an alibi. On the next morning, Julie reports to the police that Louis is missing and Inspectors Villon (Pierre Santini) and Lamy (François Maistre) of Paris assume the investigation. Soon the police find the yacht anchored offshore and the Datsun crashed on a cliff, but neither the body of Louis nor the body of Jeff. Further, they find that the Louis bank account and safe are empty and Julie becomes the prime suspect of murder.

"Les Innocents aux Mains Sales" a.k.a. "Innocents with Dirty Hands" is a great film-noir with many twists, maybe more than the necessary. Directed by Claude Chabrol, the mystery in the original screenplay recalls a Hitchcock film or an Agatha Christie's novel, and nothing is what seems to be. The femme fatale Romy Schneider is astonishingly beautiful and the introduction with her naked on the grass in breathtaking. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Assassinato por Amor" ("Assassination for Love")

Note: On 15 December 2024, I saw this film again .

I would like to give this wonderful film more than 7 points but it cannot measure up to the superb 'Helene' group of films Chabrol made during the period immediately prior to it.

Many reviews and books are rather scathing about 'Les Innocents aux mains salles', and this disregard, although understandable is largely unfounded. I must admit that the first time I watched it I found the dubbing disappointing and was a little disappointed by the rather casual approach of both director and actors. However by the third viewing a strange fascination and sense of immersion had developed, a state a lover of Chabrol's films will recognise. The deficiencies which the film has do little to detract from it's strange unearthly colour, the disturbing architecture and the 'otherness' evident in the most mundane acts and settings. Added to this it is a rather good thriller with plenty of plot twists and wrong turns.

This film, perhaps because it isn't one of Chabrol's best makes clear to me why he is such a talent. To clarify this I will point out that no other French director, new wave or otherwise interests me at all and I really think I only have a peripheral interest in film. This film is so un self conscious,playful and yet deeply sinister it makes a mockery of any serious analysis. Chabrol confounds those who attempt to analyse or compare him and this film is perhaps the best example of this, you can only enter the reality presented, experience and perhaps enjoy.

The rare opportunity to see Romy Schneider naked in the grass already justifies itself to watch this movie directed by Claude Chabrol, I've never liked those European movies called Nouvelle Vague, whose the director came from, but this kind of suspense is amazing a true Hitchcock's movie, the plot is usual, the pretty young woman married with a rich old man finds a lover, the result is so much predicable, somehow Chabrol provides some surprises during the story, the cast are fine as Rod Steiger and Jean Rochefort, but no one exceed Romy she is sexy than never and desirable, valuable movie that took place in Saint Tropez.