Klute (USA; Alan J. Pakula, 1971)

  Alan J. Pakula is part of a group of American directors that made 1970's Hollywood look good while spending the rest of their careers fruitlessly trying to top their highlights that were produced during that decade (others including William Friedkin, Mike Nichols, Francis F. Coppola and arguably Robert Altman, who did direct two of his signature pictures, The Player (1992) and Gosford Park (2001), decades later). Coupled with All the President's Men (1976), Klute is easily amongst Pakula's most notable work. Mostly remembered for Jane Fonda's multi-award-winning performance as Bree Daniels, an introspective New York City call-girl who gets mixed up in a missing-person's investigation led by private detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland), the film is also fresh treatment of the private eye genre. The investigation being quickly put aside, the picture is more interested in exploring the objectification and independence of the modern woman as the two seemingly incompatible protagonists grow closer to one another as the case moves forward. Furthermore, the early revelation of the investigation's unknown suspect to the audience serves to draw curiosity and emphasis away from the actual progression of events; an intention confirmed by the anti-climactic threat resolution. In contrast to President's Men, which demanded a much more fact-based journalisitc approach, Pakula's directing here is calm and observant, his camera movements as graceful and enduring as Fonda's Daniels, his framing both expressive and inquisitive, sometimes making the audience uncomfortable through immersion into unknown points-of-view. Unremarkable as a simple detective story, Klute is emblematic of its time as a cinematic re-assessment of multi-faceted conventions linked to social acceptance and generally accepted truths that were being tested during this tumultuous decade.