Klute (1971)

Klute

Klute (1971)

Starring: Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda, Roy Scheider, Charles Cioffi

Directed by: Alan J. Pakula

There are many movies from 1970s I have not seen, and I constantly have to remind myself that I’m looking at them through Modern Day Glasses. There are certain expectations I have that are just not going to happen because the films that formed those expectations had not been made yet in 1974. All of the twist endings I have been absorbing over the last decade were not the trend at the time the Klute script was written. So I have to check myself.

The setup: When Tom Gruneman disappears, John Klute (Sutherland), is hired by his Tom’s friend and co-worker Peter Cable (Cioffi) to carry on the investigation once the police have given up. Klute’s only trail is a call girl, Bree Daniels (Fonda), whose name appears in letters addressed to her by Gruneman.

Klute’s a quiet guy, but Sutherland can emote more with just a look than most actors can with a full script page of dialogue. I love putting Klute in the position of taking over the investigation from “the professionals” who can only offer up abandonment as the reason of Gruneman’s disappearance. Klute goes forward, studying his only lead with quiet strategy, renting a room in her building and tapping her phone.

Jane Fonda won the Academy Award for this performance as Bree Daniels. This was probably due to the  two or three scenes with her psychiatrist (ugh), where Bree lays down the Hooker’s Manifesto. To me, it seemed over the top. Her character is a mid-class hooker who tries to land modeling and acting gigs during the day. Maybe she’s playing the character of a melodramatic person, someone who tries to give an award-winning speech even if they’re just ordering a cup of coffee. If not, she’s really hamming it up. I’ve never really picked this up in any of her other performances, save maybe On Golden Pond, but now I’ll have to go back and look. Any chance to watch Barbarella again.

What she did pull off were the quiet moments, moments that many audiences wouldn’t stand for today. The character arrives home. The character eats. The character reads. The character listens to the radio. Quiet scenes of the mundane that take up valuable minutes of screen time, and I love them. Filmmakers should really take the time when possible to let their characters just live. 

Other great things: Roy Scheider as Bree’s former pimp. The brief dialogue he shared with Klute had me smiling. Scheider was such a great actor. I also enjoyed much of the score in the film. It is very haunting and worked well near the beginning of the movie when we had so few clues and the mystery lay before us.

And then, the thriller is gone. The premise of the Gruneman’s disappearance and the journey through that mystery is — to me, at least — what should have fueled this film.

But it’s not. The movie seems to be about the power of the woman over the powerful man, and how that man reacts once his weaknesses are exposed. That’s a good theme. But I think the opportunity for a really good detective story was missed here. The answer to the plot’s question, or at least the “Who” portion of it, is given far too early in the film.

Which left me scratching my head. That couldn’t be it. They’re going to switch it up. They can’t be giving me the answer already.

They were giving me the answer already. Still, this is a good, well-paced film with an Oscar win attached, and it has some great performances by some classic actors. It is well worth checking out.

Just don’t expect the twist ending.

Casino Royale (1967)

Casino Royale (40th Anniversary Edition)

I’ve always wanted to see this movie. It’s a spoof of the Bond films, based loosely on the first Bond novel. The cast is that of legend. David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress, John Huston, William Holden, and there’s even more after that. I almost missed Jacqueline Bisset as the agent who tries to kill Peter Sellers. I did miss David Prowse (the man underneath Darth Vader’s helmet), dressed like Frankenstein in the film’s climax.

There was a lot going on in this film.

I’ll start with the good. The aforementioned cast. It’s just exciting to see all of these well known faces interacting on the screen. Peter Sellers versus Orson Welles at the card table at Casino Royale — unfortunately, not so great. A little research revealed rumours that the two men didn’t get along, which would explain why the the scene is painfully short, and this is the only scene with the two of them. Still, seeing them together at all was quite a blast.

More good — the females. This film boasted an overload of femme fatales — Ursula Andress, Barbara Bouchet, Joanna Pettet, Jacqueline Bisset, Daliah Lavi. The percentage of beauty seemed a great deal higher than the real Bond films.

The art direction and set decoration. There are sequences in this film that are wonderful to behold. Colorful, dizzying rooms in which the agents jump in and out. Large dance sequences among palace columns. The Casino Royale, itself, bustling with rich gamblers and beautiful ladies.

The concepts. There were some ideas here I really liked. The idea of James Bond and Mata Hari hooking up and having a daughter — Mata Bond. And the thought of the James Bond identity being passed down like a legacy, and the original Bond returning to oversee MI6. I’ve never really thought of Bond too much outside the context he’s presented in his films.

Now the bad — the plot. The only way I knew what was going on here was to immediately refer to Wikipedia once the movie was over. I don’t need everything laid out for me, but throw me a bone every now and then. I understood that the film is lad out in chapters, and that the chapters focus on different characters. I liked this structure, but what I needed were better connections. The slapstick nature of the much of the movie clouded the character’s motivations to the point that I didn’t know where they were or what they were hoping to accomplish by being there.

This problem makes the movie a candidate for a second viewing. Most of the time, the pretty pictures carried me through these head-scratching moments. One segment that confounded me was Peter Seller’s capture in the later half of the film. This is when the post-movie research came in handy. Sellers left the production early, and the filmmakers had to cut the scene awkwardly without him available for pick-up shots. There are other things involving Sellers character which are also unclear, to me at least. Again, a second viewing might fill in the blanks.

The music by Burt Bacharach didn’t connect with me as much as the song by Dusty Springfield, “The Look of Love”, which was nominated for an Academy Award. This song was downloaded to my iPod immediately. It was also played in the first Austin Powers film.

Overall, I’m glad I took the time to watch this movie because it’s definitely something to experience. My satisfaction with the imagery and the actors involved far outweigh the lack of plot and the somewhat goofy slapstick humor.