Klute
A Movie That Is Still Complex Fifty Years Later
The pandemic is “over”-ish at least the glorious summer that is happening in NYC and you would think that the amount of screen time one immerses themselves into would lessen but alas, two years of isolation habits die-hard and the desire to still be holed-up in the comforts of one’s abode with sweats, a cocktail and the vague thing you call a relationship is still holding strong, at least for this writer.
It was in this ‘let me remain in my cave’ mindset that I was looking for a movie to watch on a recent weekday evening. My smart TV staring judgmentally at me, we have developed a love-hate codependency, and I was eager to find something “good” that both me and my plus one could watch together. The person I was with is a bit of a movie snob. Not a snob per se, but one of those people who has apparently watched every movie ever made so finding something out of their encyclopedic repertoire is a daunting exercise of negotiation. That being said, it was with this backdrop of anticipating an hour or trying to find something/anything that we could agree upon that I happened upon Klute.
Klute, the title display image and poster design drew me in. Also, the title drew me in. What the heck is a “Klute”? The word felt both foreign and awkward all at once. Plus it has Fonda. Ms. Jane Fonda and it seems both noir and vintage in a way that you know will at least aesthetically be worth the clip of time you will spend watching it. So with nodded agreement I fired it up (you can find it streaming on HBO Max) and away we went to discover just what this Klute movie was all about.
Directed by Alan J. Pakula in 1971, this is a tale about Bree Daniels played by Jane Fonda and also starring Donald Sutherland who plays John Klute (alas we know what a Klute is now…). There was a bizarre pre-intro added to the film (like how Masterpiece Theater sometimes does) which was actually informative. Apparently Klute was the first major role that Fonda did post her concentrated activism against the Vietnam War and she took on this role because she was drawn to the complexity of the character Bree. It was a good choice as Fonda won the Best Actress Academy Award that year for this role.
Proud and loud feminist Fonda plays Bree who is a prostitute nay what we would call a sex worker today. The story starts not with her but with the death of Sutherland’s (Klute’s) friend Tom Gruneman, a dear old chum that has mysteriously vanished. Tom’s family and business partner, Peter Cable (played by Charles Cioffi) hire Klute to be a private detective to find out what happened to Tom because the cops and FBI have come to a dead end. Country boy Klute then heads out, unfazed and determined, to the big city — New York City, to follow a lead found in obscene letters presumably sent by the missing Tom to Bree (it is assumed that Tom was a client of hers), and it’s the only lead Klute has to work with.
The visuals for this film are the gateway to storytelling. Director Pakula is known for The Parallax View, and All the President’s Men and this film is apparently a part of his “paranoia trilogy” that includes the above titles. The theme of paranoia is translated through the camera shots, and the editing that feels both claustrophobic and stylishly Hitchcock meets Man Ray and it is enchanted by the wondrous lens of cinematographer Gordon Willis (of Godfather fame) and the soundtrack and music score by Michael Small. There is a tight syncopation both visually and audibly that feels like you just ran up a flight of stairs leaving you dizzy and infused with the linger of hemp and cigarette filled air. Also, the clothing. Fonda had big input and personal flair in the costume design wearing her signature cinched waisted skirts, braless knit tops, chunky jewelry and the shaggiest of shag hairdos that became the look in the 70s. Harper’s Bazaar was the stylist’s credit and you can’t help feel the tableau set and finish of the film’s finish.
This is not going to be a retelling of the scene by scenes, there are Klute fandom pages out there that can take you to the frame by frames, but more this is just a think piece on this surprisingly interesting film. The gist of it is that Klute is about circumstances and people and how they aren’t black and white motifs or expected types. You also get to explore the underbelly of NYC circa 1970 and you see the complexities of being a working woman who is trying to be free but is also entrapped by that desire for freedom.
Let’s take a closer examination of that last point. Fonda’s character Bree is a modern type of woman. The whole “hooker with a heart of gold” trope is often overused but Fonda’s character is more about an evaluation of the psychology of what it means to inhabit a body, a mind, that is both entrapped and liberated at the same time. A call girl that is trying to make it as an actress and model but just hasn’t had that opportunity to be seen. Bree is sharp, witty and not only knows but seems to revel in the power of her sexuality and abilities. There is also the point of manipulation that the character talks about in voiceover to her therapist. Yes, mental health is a priority even for a call girl, and you, as the viewer, want her to have that freedom to be well, free. Being a still active member of the oldest career in the world is shown in this movie not as a matter of stuck-ness and impossible choices but more as a point of power and a form of liberty.
Fonda’s Bree is being pursued and followed by someone and that’s a burden but the biggest entrapment she faces is her desire to be able to be allowed to be herself. Herself and her complexities at whatever moment and need that might be. The movie’s paranoid compression of the storyline makes that ability to be oneself strangled but also shows how it is not the profession of choice which has led to the circumstances but more the domination of others who want to either use or save you/woman.
As any good story makes it a point to do, as the leading protagonist you root for Bree, you want her to not have to feel so bogged down with all the foolishness of living and the men that make that unbearable at times. And although in this film Sutherland’s Klute is the namesake and is triangulated in this storyline as the leading/saving hero/ knight, it is really Bree who is the force and the decider of her own fate.
The disenchanted yet cathartic possession of playing a liberated prostitute in Klute reminded me of another complex movie gem, Belle de Jour, Luis Buñuel’s film from 1967 staring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, and Michel Piccoli. In this film, there is a another female character (an upperclass housewife who is a prostitute by day) that seems wholly unexpected to be a sex worker but yet you see that this is a choice of having possession of one’s life even if it is externally perceived to be so fraught and purportedly empty/reflecting some negligence of self value.
This is what makes Klute (and Belle de Jour), both now over fifty years old, so complicatedly prescient and present day. The role of sex work has transformed in recent years and there has been strides to take it from a system of lack and domination to one of choice and liberty. There is a realignment of power and to who has authority over their bodies, their psyches and what that reflects or means in cultural/socio-relationships. Klute’s ability to make the lead character into a multidimensional person versus some cut out trope makes this representation of being a woman trying to determine their own terms feel so strangely modern and also utterly incomplete even in this day and age.
Klute — who knew it was such a movie find in this day and age? I recommend this film so that we can all both see the arc and the circle that issues of women’s liberation has taken since that time. Also to watch performances that are possessing something a bit bigger and more complex than the rote roles that are predestined or anticipated. It is a wonderful thing to be complicated and complex and the character of Bree reminds us that this is just sometimes the only way that you can be.
Additional Readings
Aquilina, T., All the Way to the Top: Why a trilogy of 1970s paranoid thrillers still resonates 50 years later, Entertainment Weekly, July 2021
Voelkel, M., Henehan, S., Rescuing the soiled dove: pop culture’s influence on a historical narrative of prostitution,Taylor and Francis, Pages 40–54, Sepember 2017
Corkin, S., Sex and the City in Decline: Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Klute (1971), Journal of Urban History, April 2010, https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144210365458
