FilmSkool — a free film school
Klute
A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctant private eye when she is stalked by a psychopath.
1971 · Directed by Alan J. Pakula · 114 min · Thriller · Crime · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 17 frames
Tagline
You'd never take her for a call girl. You'd never take him for a cop.
Plot
After Pennsylvania chemical company executive Tom Gruneman disappears, the police find an obscene letter in his office addressed to a New York City call girl named Bree Daniels, who had received several such letters. After six months of fruitless police work, Peter Cable, a fellow executive at Gruneman's company, hires family friend and detective John Klute to investigate the disappearance.
Klute rents an apartment in the basement of Bree's building, taps her phone, and follows her as she turns tricks. Bree appears to enjoy the freedom of freelancing as a call girl while auditioning for acting and modeling jobs, but she reveals the emptiness of her life to her psychiatrist. After learning that Klute has been watching her, Bree says that she does not recognize Gruneman. She acknowledges having been beaten up by a john two years earlier but cannot identify Gruneman from a photo. She further admits to Klute that she is a nervous and paranoid person. Bree takes Klute to meet her former pimp Frank Ligourin, who had managed Jane McKenna, a prostitute who had referred the abusive client to Bree. McKenna has apparently committed suicide, and their other colleague Arlyn Page has since become a drug addict and disappeared.
Klute and Bree develop a romance, although she tells her psychiatrist that she wishes their relationship would end because she felt more in control of herself when turning tricks. They find Page, who tells them that the photo of Gruneman is not that of the client, who was an older man. Page's body is later found in the river. Klute connects the apparent suicides of the two prostitutes, surmising that the client was using Gruneman's name. He also thinks the client killed Gruneman and might kill Bree next. Klute revisits Gruneman's acquaintances. By typographic comparison, the obscene letters are traced to Cable, to whom Klute has been reporting during his investigation. Klute asks Cable for money to buy the "black book" of McKenna's clients to learn the identity of the abusive client. He leaves enough bread crumbs to see whether Cable reveals his own complicity in the murders.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: David E. Lewis, Andy Lewis
- Cinematography: Gordon Willis
- Edited by: Carl Lerner
- Music: Michael Small
- Produced by: Alan J. Pakula
Cast
- Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels
- Donald Sutherland as John Klute
- Charles Cioffi as Peter Cable
- Roy Scheider as Frank Ligourin
- Dorothy Tristan as Arlyn Page
- Rita Gam as Trina
- Vivian Nathan as Psychiatrist
- Nathan George as Trask
- Morris Strassberg as Mr. Goldfarb
- Barry Snider as Berger
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Gus Productions, Warner Bros. Pictures
- Budget: $2,500,000
- Box office: $12,512,637
- Themes: new york city, prostitute, cat, obsession, audio tape, detective, junkie, pimp, conspiracy, psychologist
Own the film
FilmSkool earns a small commission from qualifying Amazon purchases, at no cost to you.
More by Alan J. Pakula
On this film
This is the plain index, shown because JavaScript is off. Every lesson here is a free video published by the channel credited on it and plays through that channel's own embed — FilmSkool hosts nothing.