Klute (1971)
Directed by Alan J. Pakula

Film Review

With this, his second and most highly regarded film, producer-director Alan J. Pakula effectively reinvented film noir for a 1970s cinema audience and delivered what is arguably the most chilling and most stylish psycho-thriller of the decade.  Klute was the first of Pakula's great paranoia thrillers - to be followed by the equally praiseworthy The Parallax View (1974) and All The President's Men (1976) - a film that was to prove highly influential in the development of the neo-noir aesthetic. In collaboration with Gordon Willis, one of the finest American cinematographers of the period, Pakula creates a distinctive thriller which has an aura of sustained menace that few films can match.  Despite its languorous pace and threadbare narrative, Klute manages to be one of the most compelling and disturbing thrillers ever made, and one that was endlessly imitated in subsequent decades.

This is the film that won Jane Fonda her first Oscar, for a performance that is easily one of her best, one that not only expresses the emptiness of the life of a professional call girl but also takes us deep into the soul of a woman whose craving for freedom is constantly frustrated by circumstances over which she has no control.  The sequences in which her character opens up to her psychiatrist reveal most about her true nature and allow Fonda to demonstrate her talent as an actress (these scenes appear to be totally improvised and are striking in their authenticity).  For someone who was at the time regarded as a torch bearer for female emancipation, the part of Bree Daniels was a gift, a chance to explore, analyse and project the rich complexities and contradictions of the female psyche, and Fonda makes the most of the opportunity she is given.

Donald Sutherland is the perfect complement to Jane Fonda, an actor who could hardly be more different in his on-screen persona and acting style.  In contrast to Fonda's vitality and openness, Sutherland appears almost like a victim of autism, his performance is more contained, more introspective and far more troubling.  There is an unmistakable inversion of gender roles - whereas Fonda appears ballsy, confident and (for the most part) in control, Sutherland looks as if he is constantly out of his depth, a far more fragile and sensitive individual.  There is also something inordinately sinister about Sutherland's taciturn, brooding portrayal - is it possible that his character is not what he seems, that he is the mysterious stalker lurking ominously just out of camera shot?  Sutherland's penchant for playing ambiguous, tenebrous characters makes him ideal for his part in Klute.

Watching the film is a deeply unsettling experience, not just because of its grim subject matter, but because of the way in which Pakula locks us in the shadowy dream-world that he so masterfully creates, one that switches seamlessly between everyday normality and expressionistic fantasy.  It is as if the spectator is trapped in a gloomy labyrinth and has no choice but to keep going, deeper and deeper into the maze, towards the fearsome monstrosity that lies at at its heart.  When the resolution finally comes after an excruciatingly slow build-up, it leaps out at us like Jack the Ripper pouncing on one of his unfortunate victims.  The nightmare concludes as it must, in the darkest and most twisted part of the human soul.  How can we not feel, and viscerally feel, the terror and revulsion that take over the heroine when she is finally confronted by her sick tormenter?  Human nature can be an ugly thing, but, mercifully, the film shows that there is also a flipside, that there is light as well as darkness. Klute may take us into some very dark places, but it is essentially just an old-fashioned fairytale and virtue prevails in the end, or so it would seem...

Film Synopsis

When Tom Gruneman, an important research engineer, goes missing his friend John Klute agrees to go looking for him, at the behest of Peter Cable, a senior executive in Gruneman's company.  The only lead Klute has to go on is a series of racy letters that the missing man apparently wrote to a New York prostitute, Bree Daniels.  Having set up camp in a basement room in Daniels' New York apartment block, Klute begins to trail the prostitute and she finally agrees to talk to him.  Although she does not recognise Gruneman from his photograph, she can recall being badly beaten by a client who may have been him.  Bree also reveals that she has been receiving anonymous phone calls and feels that she is constantly being followed.  As Klute continues his investigation he and Bree begin to form an emotional attachment, but the prostitute's fears that she may be in danger are soon borne out...