Klute (1971) The Detective & The Prostitute

Director Alan J. Pakula (Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men). 

Written by Andy Lewis and David E. Lewis. Cinematography by Gordon Willis (The Godfather, The Drowning Pool, Pennies from Heaven), Music by Michael Small. 

Klute stars Jane Fonda (Walk On The Wild Side, They Shoot Horses Don't They?) as Bree Daniels, Donald Sutherland (Johnny Got His Gun, Don't Look Now) as John Klute, Charles Cioffi (Shaft) as Peter Cable, Roy Scheider (Romeo Is Bleeding) as Frank Ligourin, Dorothy Tristan as Arlyn Page, Rita Gam as Trina Gruneman, Nathan George as Trask, Vivian Nathan as Psychiatrist, Jane White as Janie Dale, Shirley Stoler (The Honeymoon Killers, Seven Beauties, Miami Blues) as Momma Reese, Robert Milli as Tom Gruneman, Richard Shull as Sugarman, Jean Stapleton (Something Wild) as Goldfarb's Secretary, Rosalind Cash as Pat, Sylvester Stallone (Farewell My Lovely) as Club Patron (uncredited).

Jane Fonda as Bree

Donald Sutherland as John Klute

Charles Cioffi as Peter Cable

The film starts off in Tuscarora, Pennsylvania with a family and good friends get together. We see the Tom Gruneman family and Tom's buddy John Klute sitting around the dinner table. 

 Robert Milli as Tom Gruneman

Rita Gam as Trina Gruneman

A year passes and Tom Gruneman has gone missing in New York City. The police find an obscene letter among Gruneman's office papers that is addressed to a known Manhattan call girl Bree Daniels. 

Klute hired as a Private Dick

After six months of no leads, Gruneman's boss at the company's headquarters in New York, Peter Cable, hires Tom's friend John Klute a Tuscarora PD Detective as a private eye to go to New York and see if he can solve Gruneman's disappearance. 

Klute heads to NYC, brings himself up to date with NYPD case files, and rents a basement flop in Bree's apartment building that houses the Buckley Funereal Home on it's first floor. Klute taps her phone line and records her calls and then he tails her as she goes about turning tricks. 

Tailing Bree

Call Girl job

Meeting her john

Bree is also a frustrated actress who goes to casting calls and applies for various modeling jobs. Bree also has the luxury of visiting a psychiatrist and we get an idea of Bree's psychological hang ups. Bree tells her doctor that she channels her acting skills into her work, feigning enthusiasm for her clients and faking her orgasms. 

Checking her watch and faking her orgasms 

Walking up the stairway to her apartment

chilling

Klute knocks on Bree's apartment door and asks her if he could question her about Tom Gruneman. She is at first standoffish, but eventually agrees to answer Klute's questions about the threatening letters she has received from Gruneman. 

She tells Klute that she was beaten by a john two years ago but the picture of Gruneman that Klute shows her does not ring a bell. 

Bree agrees to cooperate with Klute because besides getting the threatening letters she also has the feeling that she is being stalked and having Klute around makes her feel safer. Bree takes Klute to meet her former pimp Frank Ligourin, When Klute asks Ligourin about the client who abused Bree Ligourin reveals that Jane McKenna, another prostitute in his stable who passed the abuser on to Bree. 

Roy Scheider as Frank Ligourin

Jane McKenna however is dead. She apparently committed suicide and was found floating tit's up in the East River. The only other lead to Gruneman is a third prostitute Arlyn Page who became an addict and disappeared. 

Bree and Klute begin to get a thing going for each other, though Bree is warry of a relationship. Bree and Klute start to track down Arlyn. 

They visit various clubs and get a lead to Momma Reese a Sexploitation / Roughie / Porn director / producer, modeled on a combo of Doris Wishman (My Brother's Wife) and Roberta Findlay (Take Me Naked). Momma Reese give them another lead that she last heard Arlyn was streetwalking on Lexington Avenue. 

Shirley Stoler as Momma Reese

The find Arlyn Page a junkie tricking for drugs for herself and her deadbeat boyfriend. Arlyn looks at the photo of Gruneman and tells Klute that he is not the john who beat her. The guy was older.

Dorothy Tristan as Arlyn Page

Soon after this, Arlyn's body is found floating in the East River. This matches the death of Mckenna and Klute's got a hunch that it's M.O. of the man who is pretending to be Gruneman. It all goes Noirsville when Klute reports his progress to Peter Cable. 

Noirsville

This is an interesting addition to our Detective, Private Eye, P.I. etc., etc. sub category of Noir films. The story is interesting, and the cinematography is heavily claustrophobic and quite Noir-ish. Bravo. 

I've put off watching this because Fonda and Sutherland, in my younger days, were not on my favorite actor / actress must watch list. Their names alone were not enough to pique my interest. It also came out at a time when regular film watching (I was living up in the boonies of the Northern Adirondacks) and Films Noir in particular were not yet on my radar screen.  

Fonda and Sutherland are compelling and most of the film is carried by them, Roy Scheider and Charles Cioffi are the only other two supporting actors that have reasonably large parts. The ending is slightly ambiguous and fits what you would expect in a Noirsville denouement. 8/10