Review of Dirty Hands

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 and 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. Sooner the police finds 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")