Klute



Klute is a 1971 American neo-noir crime-thriller film directed and produced by Alan J. Pakula, written by Andy and Dave Lewis, and starring Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi, and Roy Scheider. It tells the story of a high-priced prostitute who assists a detective in solving a missing person case.

Klute is the first installment of what informally came to be known as Pakula's "paranoia trilogy". The other two films in the trilogy are The Parallax View (1974) and All the President's Men (1976).

The film includes a cameo appearance by Warhol superstars actress Candy Darling, and another by All in the Family costar Jean Stapleton. The music was composed by Michael Small.

Jane Fonda won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film.

Plot
The film begins with the disappearance of Pennsylvania executive Tom Gruneman (played by Robert Milli). The police reveal that an obscene letter was found in Gruneman's office, addressed to a prostitute in New York City named Bree Daniels (Fonda), who had received several similar letters from him. After six months of fruitless police work, Peter Cable (Cioffi), an executive at Gruneman's company, hires family friend and detective John Klute (Sutherland) to investigate Gruneman's disappearance.

Klute rents an apartment in the basement of Daniels' building, taps her phone, and follows her as she turns tricks. Daniels appears to be liberated by the freedom of freelancing as a call girl, but in a series of visits to her psychiatrist (Vivian Nathan), she reveals the emptiness of her life and that she wants to quit. Klute asks Daniels to answer some of his questions, but she refuses. He approaches her again, revealing that he has been watching her. She does not recall Gruneman. She reveals that she was beaten by one of her johns two years earlier, but after seeing a photo of Gruneman, she says she cannot say for sure.

Daniels takes Klute to meet her former pimp, Frank Ligourin (Scheider), who reveals that one of his prostitutes, Jane McKenna, passed the abusive client on to Bree and another prostitute named Arlyn Page (Dorothy Tristan). McKenna committed suicide and Page became a drug addict and disappeared. Klute and Daniels develop a romance, though she tells her psychiatrist that she fears these feelings and wishes she could go back to "just feeling numb." She admits to Klute a deep paranoia that she is being watched.

They find Page, who tells them the customer was not Gruneman but an older man. Page's body then turns up in the Kill Van Kull. Klute deduces a connection between the two "suicides" of the prostitutes, surmising that the client probably also killed Gruneman and might kill Daniels next. He revisits Gruneman's contacts to find connections with the case. By typographic comparison, the supposed obscene letters of Gruneman are traced to Cable, with whom Klute has been meeting to report on his investigation.

Klute asks Cable for an additional $500 to buy the "black book" of the first prostitute who apparently committed suicide, telling Cable he is certain the book will reveal the identity of the abusive client. Cable corners Bree and reveals that he sent her the letters, explaining that Gruneman had interrupted him when he was attacking a prostitute. Certain that Gruneman would use the incident as leverage against him within the company, Cable attempted to frame Gruneman by planting the letter in his office. He confesses to the killings. After playing an audiotape he made as he murdered Page, he attacks Daniels. Klute rushes in, and Cable jumps or is thrown out a window to his death (the film uses ambiguous editing).

Daniels moves out of her apartment with Klute's help, though her voiceover with her psychiatrist reveals her fear of domestic life and a likelihood that the doctor will "see me next week."

Cast

 * Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels
 * Donald Sutherland as John Klute
 * Charles Cioffi as Peter Cable
 * Roy Scheider as Frank Ligourin
 * Dorothy Tristan as Arlyn Page
 * Rita Gam as Trina
 * Nathan George as Trask
 * Vivian Nathan as Psychiatrist
 * Morris Strassberg as Mr. Goldfarb
 * Barry Snider as Berger
 * Betty Murray as Holly Gruneman
 * Jane White as Janie Dale
 * Shirley Stoler as Momma Reese
 * Robert Milli as Tom Gruneman
 * Anthony Holland as Actor's Agent
 * Fred Burrell as Man in Hotel
 * Richard Shull as Sugarman
 * Jean Stapleton as Goldfarb's Secretary
 * Rosalind Cash as Pat
 * Mary Louise Wilson as Producer in Adv. Agency
 * Jan Fielding as Psychiatrist's Secretary
 * Antonia Ray as Mrs. Vasek
 * Robert Ronan as Director in Little Theatre
 * Lee Wallace as Nate Goldfarb (uncredited)
 * Veronica Hamel as Model (uncredited)
 * Kevin Dobson as Man at Bar (uncredited)
 * Candy Darling as Discothèque Patron (uncredited)
 * Sylvester Stallone as Discothèque Patron (uncredited)

Box office
The film earned $8 million in rentals at the North American box office.

Critical reception
Klute received generally positive reviews from film critics. It currently holds a 96% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 reviews with an average rating of 8.1/10.

Jane Fonda received worldwide recognition based on her performance. "[Fonda] makes all the right choices, from the mechanics of her walk and her voice inflection to the penetration of the girl's raging psyche. It is a rare performance." She won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role and the film was nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced. Fonda also received awards for her performance from the New York Film Critics Circle, Kansas City Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.