Klute (1971)

June 25, 2024 11:12 AM

A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctant private eye when she is stalked by a psychopath.

Available on tubi, plus some paid streamers.

Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda.

posted by bunderful (12 comments total)

“Jane Fonda does play a high-priced call girl, but with the sort of depth and dimension that sex workers had never been afforded before – and only rarely have since. (The most comparable example might be Julie Christie’s enterprising madam in the Robert Altman anti-western McCabe & Mrs Miller, which came out the same week!) Donald Sutherland does play a private investigator drawn into her web, but with a quiet passivity that mostly yields the floor to Fonda.“- Guardian, 2021

“Intelligence. I suppose that's the word. In "Klute" you don't have two attractive acting vacuums reciting speeches at each other. With Fonda and Sutherland, you have actors who understand and sympathize with their characters, and you have a vehicle worthy of that sort of intelligence. So the fact that the thriller stuff doesn't always work isn't so important.” - Ebert, 1971
posted by bunderful at 1:12 PM on June 25 [3 favorites]

link to the Ebert review that I messed up in the prior comment.
posted by bunderful at 2:43 PM on June 25 [1 favorite]

From the Guardian review:
In the end, though, Klute is Fonda’s movie, and both Pakula and Sutherland seem to recognize that. (Save for the title, which is like a play/film about Antonio Salieri being called Amadeus.)

Fitting because, while I've never seen this movie, I've certainly heard about it. From the vague sense of it I got from seeing its wake through popular culture I was only dimly aware that there was a character for Sutherland to play and figured, well, there had to be a male lead somewhere. I had always assumed Klute was the name of Fonda's character because it so clearly sounded like a movie about her.
posted by Naberius at 5:02 PM on June 25 [2 favorites]

Fonda won a Golden Globe for her performance.

It’s the kind of movie that makes me wish I could take a film studies class. I feel like there’s a lot more to discuss but I lack the vocabulary and the confidence for it.

Come to think of it, there’s almost certainly an MOOC for this.
posted by bunderful at 5:07 PM on June 25 [2 favorites]

Wait, that’s what Klute is about?

I never watched it, kinda figured from the title that it was some kind of sci-fi thing.
posted by box at 5:47 PM on June 25 [1 favorite]

I rewatched this a couple years ago and second everything said so far. In fact, I don't really have anything to add except that it's a much better film than one might expect from an early-70s flick (which, lets be honest, a lot of really seriously horrible movies came out of the early 70s) that nobody ever really talks about anymore.
posted by Pedantzilla at 6:07 PM on June 25 [1 favorite]

The...early 1970s is an astonishingly rich period for cinema, and if anything the reason this wonderful film is not talked about more is because the field is so crowded with masterpieces. It's very good, though.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:40 PM on June 25 [8 favorites]

The...early 1970s is an astonishingly rich period for cinema, and if anything the reason this wonderful film is not talked about more is because the field is so crowded with masterpieces.

Yeah, that's a really good point -- I'm always really suspect of movies from that period that I'm not already familiar with, but you're absolutely right.
posted by Pedantzilla at 2:04 PM on June 26

I’d love to find more excellent movies from this era. No pressure to give me a list, but maybe I’ll make a post on the green, if regular searches aren’t helpful.
posted by bunderful at 7:33 PM on June 26

“ Some masterpieces emerge from a single filmmaker’s indomitable and undeterrable vision. Others are the result of everyone on a movie’s team shocking themselves by pushing past their own limits. Klute, which stands as not only one of the great New York City films of the seventies but also a giant leap forward for Hollywood in the depiction of a woman’s interior life,is a masterpiece that its own creative team did not see coming.” - Criterion article has some great background detail.

I just started rewatching it and noticed that the first thing you see is a tape recorder next to some bananas. And then we see the bananas on the table. And who they are next to.

The podcast “Over-Invested has a pretty good episode on Klute. They talk about how Jane Fonda wanted to distance herself from Barbarella and actually went to her husband’s barber for the cut she has in the movie. And how she was just beginning to identify as a feminist when she took the role.
posted by bunderful at 8:07 PM on June 26 [1 favorite]

Quilt sighting: traditional hexagon quilt on Bree’s bed.
posted by bunderful at 8:19 PM on June 26

I’d love to find more excellent movies from this era.

Off the top of my head, and keeping it to ~1970-1975...
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
A Woman Under the Influence
The Last Picture Show
Nashville
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Harold and Maude
Straw Dogs
Paper Moon
A Clockwork Orange
The Godfather
Scenes from a Marriage
Cabaret
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Five Easy Pieces
Badlands
posted by bcwinters at 8:54 AM on June 27 [4 favorites]