klute (1971)
Were movies in the seventies all so much better than now? Klute was fantastic! As a movie and as an acting piece.
The plot seemed really simple to me. A man goes missing, a detective starts an investigation to find him, and the first and only lead is a call girl in NYC. Sex, drugs, murders, a cop and a hooker: these are all clichéd now and maybe were in 1971 but the movie feels so genuine. I think it's the absence of super heros running around in clusters that makes this movie feel so down to earth.
Jane Fonda is surprisingly unpretty. They didn't give her special lighting and she really looked like a person who would be walking around in New York. Her body looked realistic to me as well. Attractive, obviously, tall and long legged and slender, but not airbrushed and obviously made for the movies like all the young actresses now. And she is fantastic in this, especially in the scenes with her shrink.
Donald Sutherland was a reveliation too. I can't recall the last time I saw a grown up man in a movie acting like a grown up, and doing grown up stuff. He says very little in this film, and actually does physically rather little, so Sutherland has to communicate his character's intelligence and decency and maturity purely from body language and facial expressions.
I also liked that they made the stalking and woman attacking that happens in this film entirely untitilating, which is also a sad commentary on the films made since this one. No slow motion gratuitous nudity peep shots of the stalking victim. The absence of this surprised me because I am so used to that image. A criminal activity presented as upsetting, wow.
I felt just like I did after watching Rambo. This is just a competent movie, it's not transporting, but it strikes me as marvelous because competent well written well acted stories about actual people that takes their ordinariness seriously are so unusual now, what with vampires, mutants, super heroes and magical realism.
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