On January 22, Turner Classic Movies is airing Klute (1971), highlighted by Jane Fonda’s first Oscar-winning performance. An out-of-town detective comes to Manhattan on a missing person’s case and becomes embroiled in tracking down a sexually sadistic murderer before he can kill a call girl. What elevates this ostensible mystery to a gripping psychodrama are the main characters and their chemistry.
Bree Daniels (Fonda) is both a masterful call girl and a failed actress/model. Fonda’s Bree is confident, sexy, vulnerable, manipulative and the terrified target of a maniac. She’s also a fashion plate – stylishly braless in long knit dresses and sporting the shag haircut that sparked its own fad. This is Fonda at her iconic peak – she earned six Best Actress nominations in a twelve year period.
Bree Daniels’ foil is the stolid John Klute (Donald Sutherland), who is so clear-eyed and disciplined that he is immune to Bree’s charms – until he isn’t. Sutherland’s career is still peaking today, but he sandwiched Klute between Kelly’s Heroes, M*A*S*H*, National Lampoon’s Animal House and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Director Alan J. Pakula takes us to the grimy, seedy NYC of the period, and keeps the tension building. The scenes with Bree’s junkie acquaintances are heartbreaking. Pakula received Oscar nominations for producing To Kill a Mockingbird, directing All the President’s Men and writing Sophie’s Choice. For more on Alan Pakula, you can stream the fine documentary Alan Pakula: Going for Truth, which features Jane Fonda’s memories of Pakula.
Veteran television writer Andy Lewis, with the far less prolific Dave Lewis (presumably his older brother), were nominated for the original screenplay Oscar.
The supporting cast is good, too, Ray Scheider is superb as a smug pimp. In his first movie, Charles Cioffi’s very contained performance makes for a chilling villain; he followed Klute with a key role in Shaft and then essentially left movies for a long career in television (including playing another villain on a TV soap).
Klute has more than its share of bit players who were about to become famous:
- Veronica Hamel (a decade before Hill Street Blues) as a model at a cattle call audition;
- Richard Jordan (four years before Logan’s Run) as a guy kissing Bree at a disco;
- Harry Reems (a year before Deep Throat) as another disco patron;
- Jean Stapleton (just months before All in the Family) as the secretary at a garment factory.
I recently rewatched Klute, and it still works today. If you haven’t seen it, or seen it recently, set your DVR.