Klute (1971)
Director Alan Pakula's willingness to slow the pace down and let the grimy reality of 1970 New York City creep in is a trademark of this now-classic. The main crime plot itself is a twist on a twist, and in reality isn't much to hang on to, unless you realize right away that the plot is about a relationship, and the detective stuff, in good Hitchcock fashion, is a vehicle for the romance.
But what an original romance this is, and pulled thin and taut, depending equally on Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, an unlikely pair who, by the end, almost define the feeling of the movie as endlessly incipient. They, too, are always waiting to happen.
Klute is a necessary piece in the bubble of great films of this late 60s early 70s period. Compare its feeling to something like Billy Wilder's The Apartment for how ordinary New York is handled. The fact that Fonda plays a prostitute is another issue altogether, and a sign of America's willingness to have frank and formerly forbidden subjects for their films. Of course, a closer comparison is the 1969 Midnight Cowboy with its own grittiness and prostitution, and Klute holds up pretty well against that more intense and moving breakthrough film by Schlensinger.
This is Pakula's second film, and a long career follows with some great and varied movies, but in a way it gels here, and feels nicely resolved and mature (he is in his 40s when it was made). It's not sensational by any means, a small victory in itself. Very much recommended, a suck you into another milieu kind of film, with more sweetness than you expect.
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