The Thriller That Wasn't A Thriller -- But Was Still Great

There's good and bad to how Klute played in 1971.

The good is in its magnificent Jane Fonda performance. Here's one aspect: at the end when the killer is playing a tape of a fellow call girl's murder in progress, how Fonda not only slowly tears up, but actually manages to emit snot and spit from her mouth and nose. That's PHYSICAL acting.

There's also good in how Klute used the recent advance of the R rating (as so many early seventies films did) to explore with depth and candor topics which had not been spoken of before. Here, the REALITY of being a high-end prostitute, and some counseling sessions in which the Fonda character reveals a decided enjoyment of the work -- the manipulation of and control over men, the positive pleasure of making them happy and the negative pleasure of denying them her real self.

There's also the tough reality of a beautiful woman trying to become an "actress or model" when there are so many beautiful women out there. Too many end up "acting" as hookers. (I'm reminded of hooker Kim Basinger's line in LA Confidential , about he own failure to make it as an actress, she says that, as a hooker "I get to act a little.")

Klute allowed Jane Fonda to "merge" the sex bunny persona of Barbarella and Any Wednesday with the social radicalism of her 70's incarnation AND her revelation as a tough, brilliant actress. The key, I think, was that shag haircut. It screamed "1971" and fought against Fonda's natural sex appeal. It was a haircut as a social statement.

(Speaking of merging sex bunny and social radicalism, Jane Fonda actually pulled that off in the 60s, with her very sexy Cat Ballou at once charming the menfolk and leading a Robin Hood-like gang of thieves.)

The "bad" -- if one want to call it that -- of "Klute" is that it was sold as a thriller, and didn't really spend much time BEING a thriller. I know that its Gordon Willis darkness and moody Michael Small score helped contribute to a general sense of danger and paranoia, but the film isn't particularly interested in heavy suspense or big thriller sequences. The climactic confrontation with the killer turns out to be...anti climactic.

I saw Klute on release as a very young man, and, while titillated by the sexual candor of the film(and the knowing comic moment where Fonda, in the false throes of passion, checks her watch), I found it a dud as a thriller. But then, there weren't too many great thrillers in the early seventies. The sixties had given us Psycho, Cape Fear, The Manchurian Candidate, The Birds, Charade, Mirage, Rosemary's Baby and Wait Until Dark. And only months after "Klute" was released, its tale of a sex pervert killer would be at once exceeded and missed by Hitchcock's Frenzy, which was more of a thriller than Klute(thus exceeding its impact) but much less of a realistic drama with in-depth characterization(thus missing its impact).

All these years later, I caught Klute again the other night on TCM(as part of their "Oscar month" promotion) and, for the first time, really SAW it. I even felt that it was more of a thriller than I had thought on early release.

Thus a movie takes 47 years for me to totally "get" -- and like -- it.

A key to Klute, I suppose, remains with us to this day: men and women can have sex and enjoy it without ever really loving their partners, they can even use sex in an angry and vindictive way for the power it gives them over each other. But...everybody needs love, too. Klute explores this quite exquisitely.