Innocents with Dirty Hands

Innocents with Dirty Hands
Innocents with Dirty Hands
	Theatrical Release Poster
Directed by	Claude Chabrol
Written by	Claude Chabrol
Based on	The Damned Innocents by Richard Neely
Produced by	André Génovès
Starring	Romy Schneider; Rod Steiger
Cinematography	Jean Rabier
Edited by	Jacques Gaillard
Music by	Pierre Jansen
Production; companies	Jupiter Generale Cinematografica; Les Films de la Boétie; Terra-Filmkunst
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date	26 March 1975 (France);
Running time	121 minutes
Countries	France; Italy; West Germany

Innocents with Dirty Hands a.k.a. Dirty Hands. is a 1975 psychological thriller film written and directed by Claude Chabrol. Its title in French is Les innocents aux mains sales. The film was based on the novel The Damned Innocents by Richard Neely. The film had 553,910 admissions in France.^[1]

Plot

Louis, a rich man who lives quietly with his beautiful young wife, Julie, in St Tropez, has cardiac and alcohol problems. They sleep in separate rooms and, when she meets Jeff, a writer, she has an affair with him. They decide that she will kill Louis and that Jeff, after dumping the body off a boat, will lie low in Italy. To her dismay, Jeff disappears and, with him, all of Louis' money. She is left without husband, lover or assets and under police surveillance. Then Louis reappears, alive, fit, alcohol-free and ready to forgive her.

Principal cast

Actor	Role
Romy Schneider	Julie Wormser
Rod Steiger	Louis Wormser
Jean Rochefort	Maître Albert Légal
François Maistre	Commissaire Lamy
Hans Christian Blech	Le juge
François Perrot	Georges Thorent
Paolo Giusti	Jeff Marle
Henri Attal	Police Officer #1
Dominique Zardi	Police Officer #2

Critical reception

Vincent Canby of The New York Times did not care for the film:

The peculiar state in which its American distributor has seen fit to release Claude Chabrol's Dirty Hands in New York prompts me to wonder whether I should review it or search for its pulse.... When you watch Romy calmly (and idiotically, if you know your crime stories) bludgeon her husband's blanketed form in the bed, without checking to see if he's actually in the bed, you may correctly suspect that Mr. Chabrol is having an off-day and probably an off-picture.... I have no idea how much the English dubbing and editing have damaged the original, but the Dirty Hands that opened yesterday at the Forum and other theaters is a junk movie.^[2]

References

^ JP (1975-03-26). "Les Innocents aux mains sales (1975)". JPBox-Office. Retrieved 2011-08-25.
^ Original New York Times review (subscription required)

External links

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[JPBox_Office-1] JP (1975-03-26). "Les Innocents aux mains sales (1975)". JPBox-Office. Retrieved 2011-08-25.

[2] Original New York Times review (subscription required)

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