Klute (1971)

Why didn't anyone respond to my Klute thread?

We're afraid this will attract the "Pretty Woman Was an Insult to Hookers" troll.

Took me decades to finally watch it, but I liked it. I tend to like slower-paced movies - Pakula seems to work that way.

Very stylish movie, shot by the recently deceased Gordon Willis (The Godfather, Manhattan).

The single movie that proves Jane Fonda could really act.

I found it a bit slow too and why was it named after a supporting character? It should have been called "Bree".

I was offered it, but turned it down. I liked Up the Sandbox more.

I tried to watch it twice, but I never made it past the first half hour.

[quote]The single movie that proves Jane Fonda could really act.

Actually, she's just as good in the film she made the year before, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

She would have won the Oscar for that but she was up that year against Maggie Smith in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie."

I love this movie. Fonda looked so beautiful and chic. The small human and humorous touches added so much to the movie. Reading Linda Goodman's Sun Signs before bed for instance. That made me smile. I thought Sutherland was sexy as hell and he and Fonda had tremendous chemistry. She more than deserved the Oscar for Best Actress.

Oh god. Lots of philistines with zero taste on DL today.

"Klute" is a classic featuring one of the best female performances of the decade (or any decade, really). Bree's scenes with her therapist rival anything you'll find in a female-centered film today. The film is also a time capsule of a gritty, dangerous NYC that is no longer giving it rare historical/ethnographic value as well.

And R8 is absolutely right about Fonda's performance in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" two years earlier. She absolutely should've won that year of Smith's admittedly great in "Brodie."

[quote]The film is also a time capsule of a gritty, dangerous NYC that is no longer giving it rare historical/ethnographic value as well.

Oh, God...there are tons of them...most of them more interesting than this snorefest.

[quote]Bree's scenes with her therapist rival anything you'll find in a female-centered film today.

Those scenes were largely improvised or the dialogue was written by Fonda, which makes it even more impressive.

Fonda was at her best here. Absolutely amazing.

In this movie Fonda has the grooviest early Seventies pad in all of cinema. It is beyond fabulous.

It's a great piece of 70's American filmmaking. I loved the tough, noirish cynicism. Roy Schneider's in it, and Candy Darling.

List them then, R11. And not just a rote list of every film made in the entire decade of the 1970s. This specific year 1970-71 New York City.

Also, one featuring a cameo by Candy Darling.

We'll wait.

Wow, you sure showed HER, Miss Bossypants at r15!

R15, pull your Halliwell's out of your prolapsed rectum and fuck off whilst you're doing it, you ridiculous twat.

I'd rather be bossy than lacking in any kind of cinematic discernment whatsoever, pointless person contributing nothing at R16.

[quote]And not just a rote list of every film made in the entire decade of the 1970s. This specific year 1970-71 New York City.

OK:-

Andy Warhol's Trash (1970) Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) Hercules in New York (1970) Hi, Mom! (1970) I Never Sang for My Father (19700 The Boys in the Band (1970) The Landlord (1970) The Out-of-Towners (1970) Where's Poppa? (1970)

Bananas (1971) Believe in Me (1971) Born to Win (1971) Carnal Knowledge(1971) Cry Uncle! (1971) Shaft (1971) Such Good Friends (1971) Taking Off (1971) The Anderson Tapes (1971) The French Connection (1971) The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971) The Panic in Needle Park (1971) Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971)

also from that era:-

Death Wish

French Connection

Taxi Driver

Taking Of Pelham 123

were all better.

R19, Ms. 45 is possibly the best of all the gritty NYC films.

Jane Fonda looks eerily like the young Justin Bieber with that awful haircut.

I always prefer her in "They Shoot Horses," which is Pollack's best drama and uses Fonda's essentially humorless persona to great effect.

I loved the short novel "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" but I wasn't crazy about the film adaptation.

What is a "klute" anyway? Sounds gross.

It was supposed to be gritty and then Bree is explaining clients kinks and she said some want her to "tinkle" on them. The use of tickle blew it on that point.

We've been so inundated with the MTV Video style of filmmaking in movies and even more so on TV that many people have no patience watching something that doesn't build the story at warp speed.

The prototype for a million romantic thrillers since, and better than all of them. It's still incredible, still holds up for me, and I was born over a decade later.

Jean Stapleton's appearance ruins the suspense in the final ten minutes.

Klute was the last name of Donald Sutherland's character.

"We could have a good time for fifty.".

Marry me, R25.

Hitchcock's movies can be slow and deliberate too, those are usually my favorite types.

There is slow and deliberate and there is just plain sloooooooow.

I didn't like the movie all the much, but Fonda was perfect in it. I thought Fonda was really good in only two roles: Bree in "Klute" and Gloria in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" In both she played a brittle, cold, humorless, emotionally closed off woman. I don't think it was much of an acting stretch. Jane Fonda has always struck me as being a brittle, cold, humorless, emotionally closed off woman.

She was certainly a stylish-looking hooker. Or maybe her official title was "call girl." That's supposed to be classier than a mere streetwalker. Anyway, her shag hairstyle was all the rage at one time and she looked good in the seventies sexy slut wardrobe that wore.

She talked to call girls and madams as research for the role. But I thought the scene where she's talking to one of the johns before they have sex to be rather hard to believe. I mean, do call girls REALLY act like that? She's talking to him in a fake sexy-smarmy voice, pretending to be turned on by something he wants to do to her (he whispers something in her ear and she purrs "that's exciting" but tells him it's going to cost more) and basically behaving as though she's looking forward to fucking him. Do call girls REALLY go to all that trouble to make the john think she's turned on by him? And when he's lying on top of her she moans "oh my angel"; that seems to be laying it on kind of thick. But it is kind of funny, because as she's murmuring in fake ecstasy she sneaks a look at her watch to make sure the guy gets only the amount of time that he's paid for. Now THAT seemed believeable. But I don't think hookers normally put on a big display of horniness for their clients like Bree Daniels did.

R33, I'm sure at some point in time a high priced call girl has behaved that way.

And you would know how call girls in the early 70s act how exactly, R33?

Saw it decades ago. All I remember is her Irish accent in the audition scenes and "oh my angel" during the fuck.

[quote]I thought Fonda was really good in only two roles: Bree in "Klute" and Gloria in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

I would add "Barefoot In The Park", "Julia", "Agnes Of God", & "The Morning After".

Jane Fonda was also fantastic in the TV movie "The Dollmaker" for which, I believe, she won an Emmy.

She also kills it in this scene from "The Newsroom."

Whoever said that all she can do is cold and emotionless bitch hasn't seen her entire oeuvre.

Ohhh I also remember the radio commercial...

Bree Daniels calls herself an actress...

She got an Oscar for crying with snot coming out her nose.

Jane is a hell of an actress. I would add nine to five and coming home to above list. And California suite. Watching her afi tribute this weekend on Tcm it made me remember how many wonderful entertaining films she has done.

Jane's performance in Coming Home is one of her worst. It's all fake. Her performance in China Syndrome, the very next year, is much better. Klute, like They Shoot Horses, is perfect.

She took the food out of my mouth. Right out of my goddamn mouth!

I actually really love this movie.

I would imagine, R33, that call girls that pour it on like that have more repeat customers. Guys (gay and straight) love to think they're exceptional in the sack. I mean ... [italic]I am[/italic] but many aren't.

Fonda was great in this. So was Sutherland.

R40 - I didn't.

Wonderful performance by Fonda with great improvisation in the therapy scenes - a time capsule of second-wave feminism on film.

I'm always taken by Fonda in that tight reptilian dress. It's like a chameleon's skin. When she starts unzippping it in front of Klute she presents a perfect metaphor of the film's themes - identity, concealment, role playing, the commodification of the body, and the actress/whore duality.

Love the voyeuristic cinematography in this movie as well - all shadows, overhead angles, window/door frames and reflections. The soundtrack is also excellent - especially the "love theme".

She was excellent in The Morning After. And some of the films are your list, R19, just plain SUCK. Not every movie shot in New York is a good movie simply because it was shot in New York. The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight? Come on.

R21 I never really understood why she had the "humorless" reputation. Ok, let me rephrase that: I "understand" it, I suppose...it came from her anti-war "crusader persona" and since her films were often very "issue oriented," one persona bled into the other. But if you look at her actual work, she has always been more than capable (meaning very good) at both straight comedy and adding humor to her more dramatic work. The Morning After may be the best example of the latter. I know many think that was a wtf nomination, and as a murder mystery the film isn't exactly great, but it's one of my favorite Fonda performances.

I would say Dunaway is easily more guilty of the humorless charge, both in her performances and in real life. And no, Mommie Dearest doesn't count.

I too saw Klute on TCM this past Saturday, was it? Great movie, though the psychiatrist scenes have always stood out to me as self-conscious. Therapy sessions may be the hardest thing to make believable and/or effective in movies.

Klute remains a most watchable film, a paean to an era. Jane Fonda's best performance and the only one of her films that I can watch repeatedly. Donald Sutherland's John Klute was perfect, like someone just off the train from Regina.

Or Cabbageville, R48.

R49 Regina was the closest I could think of to Cabbageville, given that Sutherland's Canadian.

Agree on "The China Syndrome", Jane was excellent and so was Jack Lemmon.

R51 that movie has some of the best/scariest car chases, that they had no score and all you could hear were the screeches only added to the tension.

Lemmon's best performance, too. And yes one of Fonda's best. Too bad Michael Douglas is of the Dubya "nucular" school.

"He's seen my horrible. He's seen me ugly. He's seen me mean. He's seen me whorey. And it doesn't seem to matter. And he seems to accept me. And I guess having sex with somebody and feeling those sort of feelings towards them is very new to me. And I wish that I didn't keep wanting to destroy it."

I love that. I just really know exactly what she's talking about in that moment.

It's Jane's skittishness that makes her so sexy.

"She talked to call girls and madams..."? Uh, no. She did more than that. She watched through peep holes and keyholes. With permission from the women, she watched them during sessions.

And I love-love-love this film. From the madam who pencils in the appointment of an old client--"Mr. Clean!"--to Charles Cioffi, the character actor who tormented Bree, nobody put a foot wrong. This film is perfect.

"And you would know how call girls in the early 70s act how exactly>'

Actually, from reading and listening to interviews of women who were prostitutes I never got the impression they went out of their way to make it seem like they were achieving sexual ecstasy while with a client. Maybe some of them do that in hopes the client will fall for it (any client who would think a prostitute is really turned on by them is gullible indeed) and give them a big tip, but prostitutes are generally numb to what's being done to them. They have to be, in order to do what they have to do. But in "Klute", Bree Daniels is putting on quite an act. I don't think a lot of prostitutes would go to all that trouble. But maybe she just wanted to be a very, very good prostitute, one who wants her clients to believe that he actually loves having sex with them. But a guy would have to be very dumb to believe that.

"She talked to call girls and madams..."? Uh, no. She did more than that. She watched through peep holes and keyholes. With permission from the women, she watched them during sessions."

You seem to be confusing Jane Fonda with Shirley MacLaine. In one of her memoirs, she related how she prepared for her role as Irma La Douce. Researching her role as the happy hooker Irma (contrast the cheerful Irma with the morose Bree), MacLaine, accompanied by an interpreter, went out in search of a Irma-esque hooker to study. She found one in the person of a young woman she called "Danielle", who was supposedly the best hooker around.

One of the "mecs (pimps)" wanted to sell her pornographic pictures to refer to "like a technical advisor" but she declined. Danielle insisted that in order to really know what is it to be a hooker she should watch her "at work." MacLaine said she didn't want to, but surrounded by members of the Paris underworld, she felt it was in her own best interests to go along with it. She watched through a peephole as Danielle and three other hookers serviced a regular client.

Later, trying to figure out what made Danielle tick, she questioned her about her feelings and thoughts and ideas but couldn't get much out of her except "I like my job and it pays well." During one question session Danielle starts trembling and runs out; a madam later tells MacLaine that Danielle was a heroin addict. It seems that she begged her mec to release her from her lucrative "job" and the pimp gave her heroin to numb herself instead. The story of Danielle, the happy, expert hooker, was very sad.

"Klute" is great, but I loved her best in "Cat Ballou."

Yep, the only movies I watch with Fonda are Barefoot in the Park, The China Syndrome, Klute and guilty pleasure, The Chapman Report.

It's funny, I first saw both Klute and They Shoot Horses around the same time maybe five or six years ago. At the time, I thought her performance in Klute was stronger. But now I hardly remember a thing from it and I remember so many scenes of hers from Horses.

[quote] And some of the films are your list, [R19], just plain SUCK. Not every movie shot in New York is a good movie simply because it was shot in New York. The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight? Come on.

And it looks as if r19 did exactly what they were told not to do: googled "1970-'71 New York movies" and listed every one but "Klute". They're even in alphabetical order, fer Christ's sake!

"Jane Fonda was also fantastic in the TV movie "The Dollmaker" for which, I believe, she won an Emmy."

Apparently "The Dollmaker" was a pet project of hers, so course she would want to star in it. I read the book; I thought she was incredibly miscast as Gertie Nevels, a big, roughhewn, rural woman, a true survivor who had to endure incredible tragedy and bad luck but still managed to keep going. Jane Fonda, with her trembling voice, slender build and pretty, delicate features in no way resembles the Gertie Nevels of the novel. I didn't like her acting much, either; I just didn't find her convincing as a poor woman from Kentucky with a brood of children to feed. But she won an Emmy, I guess because she had the "courage" to take on a role that required her to look tired and worn-out. But she was still movie-star pretty, and I thought that totally ruined the integrity of the story. She was just not the right TYPE for a role like that.

Give it a rest R19...please....please? Can't we ever just have a nice thread where the people that DO like something talk about it?

Do you have to do this shit every fucking time?

[BLANK],is SO overrated,SO boring, SO derivative. Just fucking STOP!

Klute is one my favorite films. I've watched it many times. Sexy. Terrifying & gorgeously filmed. Amazed that the dumbbells of The DL never get tired of repeating the same schtick. It's exhausting.

R63, if it bothered you, why...oh never mind

[quote] It's on TV where I am.

Where are you? Gary, Indiana in 1978?

R64....EXHAUSTING.

Jane, winning her first Oscar for "Klute".

[quote]please....please? Can't we ever just have a nice thread where the people that DO like something talk about it?

You mean...if you like a film everyone has to have the same opinion...as you.

[quote]Klute is one my favorite films. I've watched it many times

[quote]Amazed that the dumbbells of The DL never get tired of repeating the same schtick.

Talking of dumbbells...

I saw Klute when it was released in the summer of 71. What a great period that was for going to the movies. Most Hollywood films were made for adults then, not kids and fanboys.

"You seem to be confusing Jane Fonda with Shirley MacLaine."

R57, no the person who originally posted was not confusing the two. Jane also spoke with real-life call girls in preparation for her role as Bree Daniels.

Regarding whether or not a whore would really put on an act like that - remember, Bree is also a wannabe actress. I always took those scenes as showing her trying on a character, practicing her skills.

Ok, so no mention of "Barbarella." Was that a good flick? My mom saw it when I was a kid and used to make fun of it.

That's a BINGO!, r71.

"no the person who originally posted was not confusing the two. Jane also spoke with real-life call girls in preparation for her role as Bree Daniels."

Jane didn't look through a peephole observing prostitutes plying their trade. Shirley MacLaine, in her memoir "Don't Fall Off The Mountain", recounted how she did just that.

R62 If you were from the south and had relatives from the era of that t.v. movie, you would be able to understand how Jane Fonda nailed that role. Sorry for coming across as rude.

Jane showed raw and pure acting in "Klute" and that is one of the main reasons as to why the film still lives on.

I just love this movie. Bree's abject loneliness surrounds her in every scene until the end where she finally is free of it.

And, Sutherland was hot.

"If you were from the south and had relatives from the era of that t.v. movie, you would be able to understand how Jane Fonda nailed that role."

She didn't "nail" the role. She was inadequate in it. Levon Helm, who played her husband, was the one who "nailed" it. He looked and sounded exactly like the type of man he was playing.

[all posts by tedious, racist idiot removed.]

R76, Sutherland in Klute is like Tommy Lee Jones in Coal Miner's Daughter. Their excellence is lost because the actresses are so extraordinary in their roles.

Thanks for the clip R67. That has to be the classiest acceptance speech I have ever seen.

I think Klute is a wonderful film. I've liked almost all of Jane Fonda's work. She can be very funny as in 9-5.

I'm trying to think of a film she made with George Segal that always cracked me up. They play a well to do couple who get poor when he gets fired or something and they support themselves by robbing places. Anyone remember the title of the film?

R80, Fun with Dick and Jane.

I saw a screening of this tonight—had never seen it. What a great film! Fonda was fantastic, but so was Sutherland. There are so many great 70s films set in NYC. I loved the score, especially the song that kept returning with the woman singing "La la la," it was very unnerving yet calming.

[quote]I'm always taken by Fonda in that tight reptilian dress.

I was obsessed with that dress as well.

are u nuts???

is on many BEST 100 MOVIES lists.

suspenseful as hell.

have some green tea babe and go to bed.

Slow moving in parts but Fonda gives a great performance and the chemistry with Sutherland (they had an affair during shooting) is tremendous. It's also one of his better performances, as well.

I love the scene when she comes home, sits at her little table in the kitchen and has a glass of wine and a few tokes. She's just alone with her thoughts, a few candles and a leftover teacup.

That lamp, that dress.

I wish Hollywood still made movies like this. I love the suspense/thriller genre, but it's not very common anymore which is a shame.

fonda woulda been fab in the fish movie....

SHE DARES TO BE DIFFRENT

Wow, the year she won only two of the Best Actress nominees showed up to the ceremony. Julie Christie, Glena Jackson & Vanessa Redgrave all stayed home.

Who knew Jean Stapleton was on the brink of TV stardom.

jane had one of the most amazing careers

she damn sure deserved it for the intense Klute

I admire her beliefs: the biatch has balls.

she was/is a hot muther!

a great film with layered nuanced performances from a first rate cast. my favorite scene is the model casting where bree and the rest of the models are rejected one by one quite rudely and openly by casting directors in a cattle call. immediately after the brutality of the casting call , bree books a session with a john where she is the center of attention and there is no chance of her being rejected. (i still dont know what a half and half refers to in the scene).

Honestly, I'd rather sit through The Eyes of Laura Mars. Klute is really really boring.

Great movie, Jane's great, but this does bring to mind . . . Sutherland really hasn't gotten his due. Not just re "Klute," but in general.

He received an honorary Academy Award just this past year, R95.

But I agree he never got the one or two classic roles that would have put him in the same conversation as his peers like Hackman or Hoffman. Great career, but it's a shame he never got his "Midnight Cowboy" or his "The French Connection."

the new flik with him and helen Mirren is awesome

very REAL

GO SEE IT