Classic Movie Review: Klute (1971)

Klute (1971)

Directed by: Alan J. Pakula.

Written by: Andy Lewis & David E. Lewis.

Starring: Jane Fonda (Bree Daniels), Donald Sutherland (John Klute), Charles Cioffi (Peter Cable), Roy Scheider (Frank Ligourin), Dorothy Tristan (Arlyn Page), Rita Gam (Trina Guneman), Nathan George (Trask), Vivian Nathan (Psychiatrist).

 

The knock on Klute – among those who knock it – is that is a thriller that isn’t very interested in being a thriller. That somewhere along the way, the film became a character study – and not of the title character – and neglected its thriller elements that effect the film more and more as it goes on. That was kind of my opinion when I first saw the film – some 20 years ago as a teenager – who thought that Jane Fonda’s Oscar winning performance was one of the best I’d ever seen, and Gordon Willis’ typically brilliant, dark cinematography was great – but there was something off about the plotting of the film that kept it from the overall greatness of its individual elements. Watching it again for the first time in years, I have to admit I was right about Fonda – it is one of the best performances in movie history – and Willis’ photography, which is brilliant – but wrong about the film overall. At least, sort of.

 

As Mark Harris makes clear in his excellent Criterion essay on the film, while some films are the product of a single auteur – Klute was more of a happy accident of a lot of different people coming together at the right time. The director, Alan J. Pakula, was young – this was only his second film, and hadn’t made anything like this before. The screenwriter – Andy and David E. Lewis – were TV writers looking to make a movie. Their idea was a modern noir/western – with the classic story of the outsider besting the big city – which is why Klute (Donald Sutherland) is from small town Pennsylvania, who comes to New York, descends into a world of prostitutes, pimps and other unsavory characters and solves a crime the FBI couldn’t. But the screenplay was long, so as the Pakula cut it down to make a feature, it became clear who the most interesting character was – not Klute, but Bree Daniels, the prostitute Klute meets at the beginning of the investigation, and falls in love with – as she helps him solve the crime. Add in Jane Fonda – just discovering her political leanings, who tried to quit the movie several times, worrying she couldn’t do it – and you get one of the best female characters in screen history. Fonda dug deep here – making for inarguably the most complex portrait of a prostitute seen on screen up to then, and arguably, since. The thriller element stayed obviously – in part because you have to sell the movie. Even today, in something like Get Out, Jordan Peele had to smuggle in his message in the form of a horror film. In Klute, you have this complex character in the heart of a thriller – that doesn’t really operate as a thriller.

 

As a whodunit, Klute doesn’t really work. If you haven’t figured it out at the halfway point, you’re pretty dense. This isn’t to say the characters themselves are dense – we have more information than we do, and we also know we’re watching a movie, so the bad guy has to be someone we know – and really, despite how menacing Roy Scheider is in his small part, we know he’s a red herring. Gordon Willis’ amazing, shadowy cinematography gives the film the look of a thriller throughout – but does more than that as well, isolating Bree in darkness throughout the film. The fact that the never changed the name of the movie from Klute is odd in some ways – and in others not. Sutherland’s Klute is the character men in the audience will certainly relate to. Sutherland is smart enough to keep quiet throughout the film – he grows fascinating in Fonda’s Bree, and is mesmerized just watching her. It says something about Sutherland just how muted he allows himself to be here. He has done that throughout his career – which is perhaps why we have seen his female co-stars get nominated for and win Oscars, but he never does.

 

And then there is Fonda, who may have believed she couldn’t do the role, but could not possibly have been more wrong. The legendary scenes in the movie between her and her Psychiatrist lays that character bare in a way we don’t often see. It’s not just a portrait of a prostitute that we see there – but something that many women can relate to, in how she talks about men, and her own control over them, her own desires and fears. There is a reason that Bree Daniels has become an icon just for women – but also in the LGBTQ community as well. Fonda digs deep into a role in a way that even she I don’t think has ever done since – despite her brilliant career. This is the performance she will be remembered for.

 

And the ending should also be pointed out. The film has a “happy” ending in a way – as Klute saves Bree in two different ways – first from the bad guy (although it is left ambiguous as to what actually happened there) – and then from her life in the city. But in the final voiceover to her Psychiatrist, Bree wonders if it will last – if she can be the happy country wife, or whether she’ll be right back here in a week. It’s a rather daring ending – and reminds of The Searchers – or several films by Martin Scorsese or Paul Schrader, about the man who saves the woman who may not want to be saved. What this most recent rewatch of Klute clarified for me that it isn’t a good movie with a great performance its core – it’s a great movie, with a great performance at its core.

Classic Movie Review: Starting Over (1979)

Starting Over (1979)

Directed by: Alan J. Pakula.   

Written by: James L. Brooks based on the novel by Dan Wakefield.

Starring: Burt Reynolds (Phil Potter), Jill Clayburgh (Marilyn Holmberg), Candice Bergen (Jessica Potter), Charles Durning (Mickey Potter), Frances Sternhagen (Marva Potter), Austin Pendleton (Paul), Mary Kay Place (Marie), MacIntyre Dixon (Dan Ryan).

 

Divorce wasn’t something new in 1979 – but Hollywood dealing with it in any sort of serious way, was at least somewhat new at the time. Paul Mazursky’s wonderful An Unmarried Woman had come out the previous year – and was a hit, and an Oscar favorite, and Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer ended up being the biggest box office and awards hit of 1979. Those two films are, for various reasons, still remembered today – but Alan J. Pakula’s Starting Over has pretty much been forgotten. It’s easy to see why – it’s not a great film and Pakula is one of those great journeymen directors – who did everything from Klute to The Parallax View to All the President’s Men to Sophie’s Choice – who is more craftsmen that auteur, and those guys tend to get overlooked. It is the first screenplay by James L. Brooks – in between his sitcom career and the Oscar winning Terms of Endearment (1983) – but those looking for Brooks’ best work, will find it elsewhere. The film is uneven – Roger Ebert called it a sitcom version of An Unmarried Woman – and he wasn’t exactly wrong. Yet, it does have three good performances at its core, and it is trying for something interesting. I don’t think it quite gets there – Brooks it seems didn’t have the guts to go where he would in Broadcast News, and instead the film insists on a happy end that doesn’t make much sense – but this little curiosity of a film is worth seeing.

 

The film opens with Paul (Burt Reynolds) and his wife Jessica (Candice Bergen) breaking up – she wants him to leave, he doesn’t want to, but does anyway – something made easier by the discovery that she has been unfaithful to him. As he leaves, the audience is treated to, for the first time, a hilariously bad song by Jessica, sung wonderfully awfully by Bergen – who is convinced she’s going to have a hit on her hands (and, of course, she’s right). Paul ends up moving to Boston to be near his brother (Charles Durning), and try and peace his life back together. It is his brother’s wife who introduces him to Marilyn (Jill Clayburgh) – a nursey school teacher, who at first doesn’t want to date Paul – she has had it with divorced guys –but eventually she relents. They seem perfect for each other – he even says as much to his “divorced men’s support group” – but is he really over Jessica? When she shows up in Boston one day, wanting him back, what will he do?

 

Reynolds is, I think, an underrated actor. Sure, he has done more bad movies than good (and some are downright horrible), but he was one of the biggest male movie stars of the 1970s for a reason. He has an effortless charm about him here – making the fact that women are drawn to him understandable. Bur Reynolds also does a fine job showing us Paul’s insecurity – his hesitation in jumping into bed with Marilyn, the way he loves her, but is still drawn to Jessica. Of the three leads, it is Reynolds who has the most screen time, and delivers the most subtle performance. His two female co-stars both got Oscar nominations – and they are both wonderful, but their roles give them more showoff moments. Bergen steals every scene she is in here – she is downright hilarious when she sings, and she is the right mixture of infuriating, alluring and annoying to make at least some of what Paul does plausible. Clayburgh is wonderful as Marilyn as well – a somewhat kooky woman, who is happy in her life alone without Paul before he arrives, but willingly lets her guard down – even if she fears being destroyed. Both women are able to convey at least some complexity underneath all the humor in the movie – and judging on the basis of this movie, it’s a shame neither was given a great role in a Woody Allen movie at some point. They would have nailed them.

 

The problem with the movie is mainly in Brooks’ screenplay. While his ear for dialogue was already well-tuned – there is never a doubt about who wrote the thing – the plot mechanics creak under the weight of all the clichés, and as the film progresses, the characters make decisions that just don’t make any sense – right up to the happy ending. I know that Brooks is dealing with romantic comedy standards here – but it makes for an uneasy mixture with the divorce drama he’s also writing. By the time he made Terms of Endearment, he had mastered this tricky comedy/drama tone he does so well (he perfected it in Broadcast News) – but here, whether it’s Pakula’s direction (he was a journeyman – but many a thriller journeyman) or more likely Brooks’ screenplay, the mix is off.

 

Starting Over is an interesting film – it’s interesting to watch Brooks before he perfected his style, it’s interesting to see Pakula try his hand at comedy, and it has three performances that help paper over the films rough patches – mostly (as great as Clayburgh is, I have a tough time with that last scene in the movie). It’s mainly been forgotten – and there’s a reason for that. But it was also an Oscar nominated hit in 1979 – and there was a reason for that as well.