Yes, i remember watching this great film as a kid and i fell in love
with Jane Fonda. So, re-watching it after some 45 years I was afraid
that this
film wouldn't appeal to me as much as the first time. I knew about Alan
J. Pakula as i had watched his paranoia thriller "The Parallax
View",
and this also some 40 years ago. As i remember i liked it and Warren
Beatty's stressed frightened character. But, i haven't found it on a
DVD
or Blu-ray in 2020 yet, strange as a paranoia political thriller like
that should be on disc by now. But Klute on a Blu-ray i do have now,
and ....
after watching thousands of films for many decades and
after having my own little film site where i write short texts about
the films i've seen
i'm very glad to confirm that my appreciation of Klute as a kid still
stands. WOW! Klute is a Brilliant and delightfully 70's Arty Noir or
Neo-Noir
Crime Thriller with a great performance from Donald Sutherland and Charles
Cioffi and a Beyond great performance from Jane Fonda.
Her role as Bree, a prostitute stalked by a killer is intense and truly
gripping and she very much deservedly won an Oscar award for her
amazing performance, one of the greatest i've ever seen on film.
Fonda was fantastic also as Gloria in Sydney Pollack's 1969 "They
Shoot Horses Don't They?", my second favourite film of her, but
maybe
she was even better in "Klute" if that's possible. With "Klute"
Alan J. Pakula made a Noir Crime thriller Masterpiece,
and the scene with
Jane and the killer made me hold my breath and maybe cry a little too,
it's so intense. So frightening and awful. What an emotional impact.
Thanks also to cinematographer Gordon Mills for the gritty neo-noir
style he gave the films visuals.
OMG how i love you Jane Fonda, for being the daughter
of Henry "Killer Frank" Fonda, the sister of Peter Fonda,
for your performances
as Gloria in "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" and as Bree in
"Klute", and for your beautiful striptease in the intro to
1968 Barbarella.
Klute: A Mr. Gruneman, working at a Pennsylvania Research
Laboratory, has been writing letters to a NY prostitute and he has been
missing
for 6 months. A friend of the Gruneman family, John Klute (Donald Sutherland)
is hired to investigate the disappearance.
He contacts the woman, Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) an intelligent but
disillusioned and slightly grumpy prostitute and failed model. She tells
him that she has received anonymous phone calls, that she may have been
followed and that she had a customer with a sick mind, a nasty
man and that he acted like he could kill someone, could kill her.
Klute sleuths around trying to find that nasty man and
wonder if it could've been Gruneman, and he finds out that someone is
stalking her.
There's a suspenseful and wonderfully shot chase sequence and with gialli
sounding music la-la-la-la-la ... from Michael Small's soundtrack.
Yeah, you guessed it, Klute falls in love with Bree and becomes her
guardian angel. Bree is an intelligent, beautiful, fascinating and strong
woman but also a weak, ruined, unhappy and complicated girl with some
serious issues (i.a. she's a prostitute) and she goes to psychoanalysis.
Both Sutherland (in his then most serious role) and Cioffi as the killer
are very good, but Fonda steals the show and she's intensely alive.
The Blu-ray presents the film in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen
and with english audio DTS-HD MA mono with english subtitles, no extras