Klute

This is without a doubt the most intensely atmospheric film I've ever seen, and certainly the best, tied perhaps only with Chinatown. Pakula's eye shows us the true grit and grime of the city that never sleeps. Klute was packaged as a suspense thriller, but it is so much more than that. It is also a character study (either of Bree herself, or the city itself). It is a love story. It is a study of urban stereotypes. And did I mention the music? The eerie scrapes, nervous marimba and fearsome humming will really creep you out, but the warm trumpets and delicate strings on the flipside are warm and enveloping. Anyway, back to the film. The slow scenes are equally crucial as the action scenes; the gorgeous sequence of Bree and John Klute shopping for oranges in the city market at night is a powerful statement that love can exist between opposites. Fonda's brilliantly improvised therapy scenes are explosive as they are heartrending. No actress, living or dead, can touch her. As the beautiful and confused Bree she is both vulnerable and in charge. The unraveling of her psyche is fascinating to watch, as is John Klute's repulsion and fascination with "the city folk". The final confrontation will disturb and haunt you for days. Bottom line, essential. No film will take you into its world quite like this one. They just don't make 'em like this anymore.

In Pennsylvania, when his old friend, the laboratory engineer Tom Gruneman (Robert Mili), vanishes, detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is hired by Tom's colleague Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) to search for him. The unique lead is an obscene letter written by Tom to a call-girl in New York called Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda), and Klute moves to the Apple city to investigate the disappearance of Tom. Klute blackmails Bree to help him to find other prostitutes that might have been with Tom using some tapes of her phone calls that he had secretly recorded. They realize that some is stalking Bree, while Klute falls in love for Dress, and she has some sort of feeling that she can not understand for him.

In 1971, Jane Fonda was a muse worshiped by many teenagers like me, and I was particularly following her work through the sexy and cult sci-fi "Barbarella" and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They", an excellent adaptation of Horace McCoy's novel of the same name that had impressed me a lot. "Klute" was considered erotic in those times and the scene where Dree fakes an orgasm while looking at her watch was a sensation. Later I saw this movie many times on VHS, and now I have just bought the DVD.

"Klute" is really a classic film-noir, one of my favorite movies ever, with an engaging story with thriller, crime and romance, magnificent direction and stunning performances of Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland in the role of very believable characters. Jane Fonda deserved the Oscar perfectly playing a very complex character, strong and insensitive with her clients, fragile and confused with love. It is amazing how this movie has not aged and how much I like it every time I see it. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Klute, O Passado Condena" ("Klute, the Past Condemns")

"Klute" was a mixture of lone cop and private eye: a police officer who was hired privately to investigate somebody's disappearance… The trail led him deep into the world of New York call-girls, pimps and drug addicts… It was all shown, the vice, the degradation, but with intelligent compassion and honest humanity instead of the leer that so often sits on the face of the Seventies…

Although barely more talkative than "Dirty Harry," "Klute" emerged as a whole human being rather than as a robot programmed to shoot and hit…And as a high class hooker Bree Daniel, Jane Fonda achieved a characterization that has never been surpassed in all the abundant literature of tarts with hearts…

"Klute" was a modern, as honest and unflinching as any fanatic for realism could ask; yet it was never curious about sexuality, never needlessly violent, never brutal… And for complete, entertaining suspense, it was up there with the great ones: an enormous tribute to the producer-director Alan J. Pakula

Fine gritty dramatic mystery that gets the pulse of NYC in the early 70's just right. It becomes another character in the film which only strengths the picture and adds a certain creeping menace to it. While the movie pivots on the disappearance of a man it's really a character study of alienation with the investigation a peg to hang the main action on.

Sutherland is fine as the inquiring detective John Klute but the film lives and dies on the character of Bree Daniels and Jane Fonda owns that part.

Bree wants the world to believe she's one tough hard customer but as the film progresses it becomes more and more obvious that the bravado is a front. She displays raw, honest emotion in all her scenes but particularly in her therapy sequences. She shows so many layers to the character, including flashes of humor that Bree comes across as a real woman.

Usually I try not to let appearance factor into my appraisal of a performance however that shag hairstyle is integral to the audience's acceptance of her as a tough call girl. Having moved forward and away from her initial image of the blonde cutie with her previous film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, she completely transforms herself in this. The soft blonde Jane Fonda of Barefoot in the Park or Barbarella of only a couple of years before would never be believable as Bree Daniels. The film was a major hit and she won her first Oscar for it. She was up against some excellent performances that year but she was the correct winner.

Expertly directed by Pakula in his usual observant style this is a classic of '70's cinema. Highly recommended.

Despite the rough-edges reputation of Pakula, he always manages to give us some beautifully shot, almost fragile images. Like Fonda pondering an envelope full of money and a blank invoice while surrounded by clothing-store dummies; or Sutherland choosing apricots by feel; or even Roy Scheider's silent acknowledgement that he is being used. And Fonda's artless performance is so unbelieveable, I couldn't believe it was her.

Terrifically acted - everyone takes just the right tone. My only quibble about the movie is how the mystery is solved. It's much too abrupt given the meandering pace of the rest of the movie. But the plot means nothing in this surprisingly delicate character study.