KLUTE A
USA (114 mi) 1971
‘Scope d: Alan J. Pakula
Alan J. Pakula, a Yale drama graduate, is one of the leading
proponents of richly textured, character-driven dramas, where he helped guide eight
different actors to Oscar-nominated performances, including Academy Award
winners relatively early in the careers of both Jane Fonda (age 34) in KLUTE
(1971) and Meryl Streep (age 33, another Yale grad) in SOPHIE’S CHOICE
(1982). In much the same vein as Roman
Polanski, Pakula excels in smart, sophisticated thrillers, known for creating
tension through oppressive, tightly constricted screen space, with a
fascination for sleek, modern exteriors that lend a timelessness to his
films. The 70’s may be the greatest era
of American cinema, where the once-powerful Hollywood Studios sold off many of
their assets temporarily reducing their power and influence, leaving an opening
for directors to have an impact on films like never before, producing the likes
of Bob Rafelson’s Five
Easy Pieces (1970), Kubrick’s A
Clockwork Orange (1971) and BARRY LYNDON (1975), Altman’s MASH (1970), McCabe
& Mrs. Miller (1971), Images
(1972), The
Long Goodbye (1973), California
Split (1974), Nashville
(1975), and 3
Women (1977), Coppola’s THE GODFATHER (1972), THE GODFATHER Pt. II (1974), THE
CONVERSATION (1974) and APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), Scorsese’s Mean
Streets (1973) and Taxi
Driver (1976), Peckinpah’s Pat
Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring
Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974), Woody
Allen’s ANNIE HALL (1977) and MANHATTAN (1979), but also American independent
films like Barbara Loden’s Wanda
(1970), Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane
Blacktop (1971), John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978), along with a decade of
films from movie maverick John Cassavetes, Husbands
(1970), Minnie
and Moskowitz (1971), A
Woman Under the Influence (1974), The
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), and Opening
Night (1977). Almost forgotten in
this firestorm of powerful dramas are the carefully orchestrated paranoid
thrillers of Alan J. Pakula, who specializes in suspense thrillers layered in
subtlety, plot secrets, and deception. The
first of what would become known as the “paranoia trilogy,” along with THE
PARALLAX VIEW (1974) and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976), these were films made
in response to the looming fears that gripped the nation coming on the heels of
60’s assassinations, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, where television images
flooded the nation reinforcing a government that had lost control, where behind
the scenes secret and often nefarious powers vied for the power vacuum, where
instead of the massive participatory demonstrations of the protest movements of
the 60’s, suddenly ordinary citizens felt powerless to effect their destiny.
The paranoia thriller exemplified impotence in the face of
danger, simultaneously ushering in an era of 70’s disaster films like AIRPORT
(1970), THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972), EARTHQUAKE (1974), THE TOWERING INFERNO
(1974), and JAWS (1975), with revenge films to follow in the 80’s, vividly
portraying a breakdown of community cohesiveness leaving the individual feeling
isolated, hopelessly trapped and alone, exuding a strange and mysterious
passivity bordering on defeatism, represented by Sydney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF
THE CONDOR (1975). What’s lacking in
these films is a conquering hero to eradicate the pervasive threat, like Clint
Eastwood in DIRTY HARRY (1971) or Charles Bronson in DEATH WISH (1974), as the
mythical era of the western hero has passed, replaced by ineffectual real-life
political leaders disgraced by unethical abuse of power and rampant corruption,
where Pakula in particular emphasized the empty spaciousness of the
surroundings, where the individual is dwarfed by the seemingly mammoth
skyscraper reflections of power and modernity, barraged by interior fears,
often of unknown origin, while the idea of security or personal well-being has
all but vanished, left with a feeling of impending doom creeping into the moral
fabric of society. Ironically, Pakula
himself lost his life in a freak auto accident on the Long Island Expressway in
1998 when another car hit a lead pipe on the road that flew through his windshield,
killing him instantly. KLUTE was the
director’s first major commercial success, significant for the exhaustive
research done by both the director and lead actress in exploring the lurid, behind-the-scenes
lives of Manhattan’s call girls, including meticulous production values that
included fashionable haute couture outfits from Fonda’s own personal wardrobe
that made such a splash onscreen. Despite
Pakula’s considerable talents, this is largely remembered as a Jane Fonda
movie, having lost the Oscar earlier to British actress Maggie Smith in THE
PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969), despite being the odds-on favorite for her
amazing performance in Sydney Pollack’s THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? (1969),
suspected to be due to her unpopular (in Hollywood) “Hanoi Jane” activism
against the war in Vietnam at the time.
But in KLUTE Fonda is quite simply brilliant in a career-defining
performance, blowing away the all-British competition to win the Best Actress
Award, the last of her “sexy” performances playing a high-priced call girl in
this interesting dual exploration of sex and capitalism as seen through the
lens of the burgeoning feminist movement.
Written by Dave and Andy Lewis, almost exclusively known as television
writers, Fonda’s character is uncommonly rich and fully realized, a complex composite
of a prostitute and film noir femme fatale, much of it developed
improvisationally by Fonda herself, especially the therapy sessions, exhibiting
mood shifts that are often beautiful and ugly in the same scene, where her
surface level wit and everpresent sarcasm is her chief defense mechanism hiding
a more scarred and wounded interior soul.
KLUTE is an unusually intelligent film that balances mood
and atmosphere with personality and vulnerability, which is what we remember
afterwards in Fonda’s character of Bree Daniels. Dressed in mini-skirts and high boots,
wearing tight sweaters without a bra, with a shag haircut accentuating her
bangs designed by a hairdresser in New York’s Lower East Side, Bree is a modern
woman that always looks like a million bucks.
An aspiring model and actress, seemingly in control of her own career
path, she is a part-time call-girl making quick cash in order to pay for the
lavish lifestyle to which she has become accustomed, living alone, drinking
wine and smoking an occasional joint upon returning home at night to relax and
wind down. Mixing themes of surveillance
and voyeurism, over the opening credits the audience is introduced to an audio
tape recording where Bree can be heard reassuring one of her customers to
relax, have fun, and basically “let it all hang out,” which serves as a kind of
code for the sexual revolution of the 60’s that went awry when
certain factions turned violent, basically spoiling the party for the free love
generation. Meanwhile, somewhere in the
heartland of Tuscarora, Pennsylvania, a family man and business executive Tom
Gruneman (Robert Milli) disappears during a business trip to the city, where
his boss, Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi), feels somewhat responsible, so he hires
Gruneman’s best friend, Donald Sutherland as John Klute, a Pennsylvania-based
private detective to search for his missing friend. According to the police, they reached a dead
end after six month’s, as the only evidence obtained is an obscene typewritten letter
found in Gruneman’s office addressed to call-girl Bree Daniels in New York, who
reports receiving several letters and phone calls from Gruneman, though she
can’t recall meeting him, while she also has a feeling she’s being
stalked. Renting an apartment in the
basement of her building, Klute taps the phone of Ms. Daniels while also
following her as she turns tricks. While
she exudes confidence and a sense of personal liberation by always being in
control of her male customers, seen faking an orgasm while looking at her
watch, we’re also privy to a different side, seen in a series of visits to her
psychiatrist (Vivian Nathan), where she reveals the sex work is more a
compulsion than a necessity, though it pays well, but it’s hardly fulfilling,
leaving behind an interior void in her life, where she’s been trying to get out
of “the life” with little success. When
Klute finally talks to Bree, after her initial reluctance, she reveals she was
seriously beaten by a psychopathic customer several years earlier who “was
serious” about beating women, though she can’t connect the photo of Gruneman to
that man.
Klute discovers Bree is his only connection to a lurid world
of women-for-hire in a city that he is already excluded from, so he needs her
help, delving more deeply into her personal associates, including ex-boyfriend
Frankie Ligourin (Roy Scheider), her former pimp and protector, a slick con man
with underworld connections who is the picture of male arrogance and pride,
always seen with a beautiful girl on his arm, making sure Klute gets the
company message, “I want to make something clear: You know, I don’t go to a woman. A woman comes to me. *Her* choice.” Frankie reveals it was one of his other girls
that passed on the abusive client to Bree and another girl, Arlyn Page (Dorothy
Tristan). While that girl is now dead
from a suicide, Page has become a drug addict and completely dropped out of
sight, where she could be anywhere. Despite
dealing with a sophisticated call-girl who speaks freely and openly about sex,
Klute remains an honorable man, who comes from a small town and retains his
core values of conservatism and good will, offering his protection, which is
something Bree takes advantage of, “Don’t feel bad about losing your
virtue. I sort of knew you would. Everybody always does.” However, their relationship deepens,
developing into a sexual romance (as it did in real life between the two leads),
where one of the best scenes in the film is walking the streets of New York
together where they stop and pick up fruit at an outdoor market, where she is
just eying the guy, as if for the first time, afterwards seen telling her
therapist that she’s afraid of losing control, that this man is good and decent
to her, who’s seen her look fabulous, but also completely horrid, where
trusting a man is not easy, suggesting she wishes sometimes she could go back
to “just feeling numb.” Throughout the
film, she is frequently shown alone in her apartment from the vantage point of
a stalker across the street who is watching her. At one point Klute realizes he’s on the roof,
but his search proves futile. The
uninhibited freedom of her lifestyle is constantly under threat, reflective of
the early stages of a feminist era that was continually under attack as well,
where it’s interesting that early feminist critics lauded the film as a
realistic portrayal of a woman’s personal conflict, only to later reverse
course, as her attempt to accept a man in her life for stability or balance is
paramount to endorsing patriarchy. This
reflects, however, the complexity of the role, as it appeals to a cross-section
of viewpoints, even after the passage of time, retaining a unique blend of
modernity and film noir, pitting hardboiled cynicism against the romanticism of
a possible relationship.
More than a classical thriller, a
“film noir,” or a contemporary reworking of the “private eye” movie — as some critics
have seen it — Klute seems closer to
the psychological suspense thriller, with most of the action going on inside
the central character’s head. Klute is told from a highly subjective
viewpoint, and the other characters, while “real,” can be seen as projections
of the heroine’s psyche. The film
functions on both levels, as a straight suspense story and as a dramatization
of intense inner conflict, but it is from its second level that it derives its
power.
Critic Diane Giddis in her essay The Divided Woman: Bree Daniels
in Klute, taken from her book Women
and Film, 1973, suggests women should completely disregard the conventional
film noir conventions and reclaim the film on the basis of its sexual politics
alone, where Bree becomes a stand-in for the feminist cause. But the film offers an equally compelling
narrative about the male psyche, where the private eye genre is a vehicle
commonly used for strong individual male characters, where the stalker element
in a tense paranoia film adds a disturbing element of potential male violence
directed towards women. Offering an
openly cinéma vérité style of viewing the streets of New York, the interior
shots, by contrast, beautifully photographed by cinematographer Gordon Willis,
create a visual claustrophobia that explores the male fears about women. While championing Bree’s interior
psychological world, where asking what a woman wants becomes such a significant
aspect of her character, the film simultaneously delves into a world of male
apprehension, where a liberated woman, as reflected by the repeated tape
recording loop heard at the opening, somehow opens the floodgates of a demented
male psychopath whose masculinity is threatened by these open sexual freedoms,
where his only response is criminally inappropriate. This unfortunately reflects the existing reality
where rape remains a systematically entrenched violent form of criminal male
domination over women that continues to plague all sections of the globe, including
the American armed forces, but is especially prevalent in war ravaged
regions. The distinctively eerie musical
soundtrack by Michael Small, so effective in the film, is reminiscent of John
Carpenter’s memorable synth score in HALLOWEEN (1978), where it’s hard to
believe Carpenter wasn’t hugely influenced by this film, as much of this has
the same creepy feel as a slasher movie, where something is always approaching
Bree, with the camera continuing to follow her wherever she goes (as it does
Jamie Lee Curtis), at times literally becoming the eyes of the stalker. Pakula does an extraordinary job creating a
feeling of pathological disassociation, of being outside societal boundaries
and literally over the edge, especially the view of a man seething in his own
disgust with himself, alone in the darkness of a penthouse skyscraper office
with floor-to-ceiling windows revealing an utterly spectacular vantage point of
the city of New York. But in fairness,
the film also offers another more balanced male view, that of the titular
character Klute, who may as well be a stand-in for the audience. Sutherland is terrific in a performance
defined by quietly subtle restraint, where his impassive stoicism is laudable,
making no judgments about her former life as a Manhattan prostitute,
recognizing that she needs total acceptance as a woman to really be free of her
past. He appreciates her even when she
doesn’t appreciate herself, but in a subversion of the testosterone-laden film
noir detective genre, he’s not the featured central character. While she freely exposes her inner domain both
sexually and through repeated visits with a therapist, his more closed, inner
psyche remains hidden and largely unknown, as it’s uncertain where this will
all lead and whether they even have a future together. Ahead of its time both then and now, the
film’s true insight is the revelation that feelings of love alter the sexual
and psychic dynamic, as the normally self-reliant Bree feels increasingly
overwhelmed and disempowered by a sudden surge of feelings she can’t control, as
it’s no longer all about her, where learning to share the uniqueness and
fragility of her own inner world with a significant other remains one of the mysterious
challenges of anyone’s life.
