Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975)

The opportunity to see Romy Schneider naked in the grass already justifies itself to watch this movie directed by Claude Chabrol,I 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 predicable....but Chabrol provides some surprises along the story...the cast is fine as Rod Steiger and Jean Rochefort,but no one exceed Romy she is sexy than never and desirable....valuable movie settled in Saint Tropez.

They both longed to work with each other for many years, but when it finally happened in 1974, Romy Schneider and Claude Chabrol failed miserably. "Les innocents aux mains sales" is a low point of both their careers, a slow-moving and unconvincing film that meanders somewhere between crime story, sex drama, baroque thriller and social study."Les innocents…" pairs Schneider and Rod Steiger as Julie and Louis Wormser, a rich couple living in a grandiose villa in the Southern part of France. Louis is very rich and about twenty years older than his wife who is disgusted by his alcoholism and rude manners. One day, Julie meets Jeff Marle (hunky Paolo Giusti), a writer and neighbor who flies kites and shows eminent sexual interest in her. Together, they plan to drown Louis and run away with the inherited money. Of course, something goes wrong, and a supposedly dead Rod Steiger suddenly stands on the doorstep again, ready to take revenge…Schneider solidly acts her way through the 125 minutes of Chabrol's mystery, and certainly she's prettier than ever, but you don't get to see the passionate performer that made films like "L'important c'est d'aimer" or "Les chose de la vie" so unforgettable. As a matter of fact, Romy seems obviously bored and out of place, and she doesn't watch with either Steiger or Giusti. She later declared that she and Chabrol just didn't get along together: "He just sat there playing chess while the cameraman and we tried to make this picture. He left me alone, something I cannot bear. I need either a challenge, like with Welles, Visconti, or Zulawski, or cooperation, like with Sautet.""Les innocents…" does have its moments of greatness, but all in all, it remains an unsatisfying experience.

Well done thriller - I won't add to the other comments save this -- just so you know -- Rod Steiger and Romy Schneider were filmed speaking in English while all other characters were filmed speaking in French: So, you have two choices (assuming you're either English or French speaking - and not Spanish): Watch the film in French (with or without English subtitles) - but keep in mind Rod Stieger and Romy Schinedier's voices will be DUBBED into French. It is definitely not Steiger speaking French (although I think Romy speaks both languages) Watch it in English - and the voices of the all other (French) actors (except Steiger and Schneider) will be DUBBED into English.Didn't bother me tooo much...but I'm a Steiger fan - so I needed to hear him speak in his native tongue.

Chabrol just can't be bothered with mcguffins and creating suspense, that's where he differs from Alfred Hitchcock. Instead of a meticulous recreation of a social group (the rich), we are given careless expressionistic filmmaking using the repertory actors Attal and Zardi (here as buffoonish policemen) plus a name Hollywood actor (Steiger), an Italian pretty-boy (Giusti) and the greatest European actress of her time, Romy Schneider.You know the plot's clumsy when two characters keep having to discuss it at length for the viewer's benefit. There's a murder scene using some sort of club that falls completely flat in dramatic terms. There are simply too many twists and turns for a simple adultery story to bear, so we are left to admire the gracefulness of Schneider's performance. She is a trophy wife who must start to make decisions on her own, in the absence of her husband and her lover; she must also learn to lie convincingly to suspicious detectives. The eroticism of the lovemaking on the livingroom carpet, taunting her frustrated husband is well evoked.The interrogation before the judge is the one scene that really holds up dramatically. The impatient judge who finds the beautiful woman suspect very desirable, the eager lawyer who smells a way out for his client--fabulous acting by Jean Rochefort--and the woman herself who hardly says a word while the two men argue over her fate. The only such scene I can recall with this power is the one in Altman's The Player.