Klute

With her Oscar-winning turn in Klute, Jane Fonda reinvented herself as a new kind of movie star. Bringing nervy audacity and counterculture style to the role of Bree Daniels—a call girl and aspiring actor who becomes the focal point of a missing-person investigation when detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) turns up at her door—Fonda made the film her own, putting an independent woman and escort on-screen with a frankness that had not yet been attempted in Hollywood. Suffused with paranoia by the conspiracy-thriller specialist Alan J. Pakula, and lensed by master cinematographer Gordon Willis, Klute is a character study thick with dread, capturing the mood of early-1970s New York and the predicament of a woman trying to find her own way on the fringes of society.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1971
  • 114 minutes
  • Color
  • 2.39:1
  • English
  • Spine #987

Special Features

  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by camera operator Michael Chapman, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New interview with actor Jane Fonda, conducted by actor Illeana Douglas
  • New program about Klute and director Alan J. Pakula by filmmaker Matthew Miele, featuring interviews with film scholar Annette Insdorf, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, and actor Charles Cioffi, along with archival interviews with Pakula
  • The Look of “Klute,” a new interview with writer Amy Fine Collins
  • Archival interviews with Pakula and Fonda
  • “Klute” in New York, a short documentary made during the shooting of the film
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris and excerpts from a 1972 interview with Pakula

New cover by Jay Shaw

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by camera operator Michael Chapman, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New interview with actor Jane Fonda, conducted by actor Illeana Douglas
  • New program about Klute and director Alan J. Pakula by filmmaker Matthew Miele, featuring interviews with film scholar Annette Insdorf, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, and actor Charles Cioffi, along with archival interviews with Pakula
  • The Look of “Klute,” a new interview with writer Amy Fine Collins
  • Archival interviews with Pakula and Fonda
  • “Klute” in New York, a short documentary made during the shooting of the film
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris and excerpts from a 1972 interview with Pakula

New cover by Jay Shaw

Klute
Cast
Jane Fonda
Bree Daniels
Donald Sutherland
John Klute
Charles Cioffi
Peter Cable
Roy R. Scheider
Frank Ligourin
Dorothy Tristan
Arlyn Page
Rita Gam
Trina
Nathan George
Trask
Vivian Nathan
Psychiatrist
Morris Strassberg
Mr. Goldfarb
Barry Snider
Berger
Betty Murray
Holly Gruneman
Jane White
Janie Dale
Shirley Stoler
Momma Reese
Robert Milli
Tom Gruneman
Credits
Director
Alan J. Pakula
Produced by
Alan J. Pakula
Coproduced by
David Lange
Written by
Andy Lewis
Written by
Dave Lewis
Music composed and conducted by
Michael Small
Director of photography
Gordon Willis
Camera operator
Michael Chapman
Film editor
Carl Lerner
Art director
George Jenkins
Sound
Chris Newman
Costumes designed by
Ann Roth
Set decorator
Joe Mortensen
Title sequences by
Arthur Eckstein
Miss Fonda’s hairstyles by
Paul McGregor

Current

How Jane Fonda’s Feminist Awakening Collided with Klute
How Jane Fonda’s Feminist Awakening Collided with Klute

The Oscar-winning actor remembers how her heightened political consciousness in the early 1970s led to her initial hesitation to take on the leading role in Alan J. Pakula’s psychological thriller.

Klute: Trying to See Her
Klute: Trying to See Her

Alan J. Pakula’s partnership with a newly politicized Jane Fonda turned what could have been a run-of-the-mill detective movie into a psychologically vivid portrait of a strong female character.

By Mark Harris

Michael Small, Film Music’s Prince of Paranoia
Michael Small, Film Music’s Prince of Paranoia

During the 1970s, an incredibly fertile decade for unorthodox approaches to film scoring, the composer of The Parallax View and Klute came into prominence with an out-of-the-box sound that captured the dread of the era.

By Tim Greiving

Isabel Sandoval’s Top 10
Isabel Sandoval’s Top 10

The director of the acclaimed new film Lingua Franca chooses a selection of movies she loves, including ones that have inspired her to break the rules of genre and narrative.

Feast Your Eyes: A Tour of the Sartorial ’70s
Feast Your Eyes: A Tour of the Sartorial ’70s

From the outré to the elegant, the looks on display in 1970s American cinema capture a decade of disorienting social transformation.

By Cintra Wilson

Cinema in the Surveillance Zone
Cinema in the Surveillance Zone

A new series on the Criterion Channel dives into the wages of espionage and paranoia through a mix of Hollywood thrillers and art-house dramas.