Klute

This acclaimed thriller stars Jane Fonda as Bree Daniel, a New York City call girl who becomes enmeshed in an investigation into the disappearance of a business executive. Detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is hired to follow Daniel, and eventually begins a romance with her, but it appears that he hasn’t been the only person on her trail.

More than just a spine-tingling exercise in urban paranoia (though it is that too), Klute thrives on a different kind of tension: the tension between the demands of a woman-in-peril scenario, and Jane Fonda’s authoritative portrayal of actress/call-girl Bree as an emancipated woman. It’s clear that in some ways, Bree herself is the real threat. Fonda won the Oscar for the part, probably the most important in her career.

Jul 23: Intro by filmmaker and educator, Professor Harry Killas

Fonda’s Oscar-winning performance as Bree does argue for a fullness of character – and of womanhood – that feels radically open to different possibilities and a wide spectrum of emotional experiences, including moments during therapy where she expresses uncertainty about her future and the choices she’s made. She’s powerful. She’s vulnerable. She can be extremely funny at times, too. But mostly, in a film where she struggles to disentangle herself from the obsessions of men, Bree wants to be left alone.

Scott Tobias, The Guardian

Jane Fonda’s motor runs a little fast. As an actress, she has a special kind of smartness that takes the form of speed; she’s always a little ahead of everybody, and this quicker beat—this quicker responsiveness—makes her more exciting to watch. This quality works to great advantage in her full-scale, definitive portrait of a call girl in Klute.

Pauline Kael

What is it about Jane Fonda that makes her such a fascinating actress to watch? She has a sort of nervous intensity that keeps her so firmly locked into a film character that the character actually seems distracted by things that come up in the movie. You almost have the feeling, a couple of times in Klute, that the Fonda character had other plans and was just leaving the room when this (whatever it is) came up.

Roger Ebert

Harry Killas is Professor and Assistant Dean in the Film + Screen Arts program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. His most recent documentary films include Collective Agency about a group of seniors who became photo-artists in late life, and Greek to Me, an autobiographical documentary about his family and ethnic identity. His research/ filmmaking theme areas include education, the arts, and social, political and other histories. As a curator, Killas programmed seven seasons of the series The Image Before Us: A History of Film in British Columbia at The Cinematheque.