Klute

To prepare for her role as Bree, Jane Fonda spent a week in New York City observing high-class call girls and madams. She also accompanied them on their outings to after-hours clubs to solicit men. Fonda was disturbed that none of the men showed any interest in her, which she believed was because they could see that she was really just an "upper-class, privileged pretender."[3]

Fonda had doubts about whether she could portray the role and asked Alan Pakula to release her from her contract and hire Faye Dunaway instead, but Pakula refused. One of Fonda's primary concerns was that she, as a nascent feminist, should not play a prostitute, but when Fonda admitted this concern to a more longstanding feminist, she was disabused of the notion. To overcome her doubts that she could not play such a role, Fonda turned to her memories of several call girls whom she had known while living in France, all of whom worked for the famed Madame Claude. She remembered that all of them had been sexually abused as children, and Fonda used this as an "entry" to her own character and as a way to understand Bree's motivations in becoming a prostitute.[4]

Klute was released on DVD in 2005, and on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection in July 2019.[5]

The film earned US$8 million (equivalent to $53,528,348 in 2021) in theatrical rentals at the North American box office.[6]

Jane Fonda's performance received universal acclaim, and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Klute was praised for its screenplay and Fonda's performance. On Rotten Tomatoes, Klute holds an approval rating of 93% based on 40 reviews, with an average rating of 8.19/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Donald Sutherland is coolly commanding and Jane Fonda a force of nature in Klute, a cuttingly intelligent thriller that generates its most agonizing tension from its stars' repartee." On Metacritic, which assigns a rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."[7]

The New York Times, in one of the few negative reviews, wrote, “Pakula, when he is not indulging in subjective camera, strives to give his film the look of structural geometry, but despite the sharp edges and dramatic spaces and cinema presence out of ‘Citizen Kane’ it all suggests a tepid, rather tasteless mush. The acting in ‘Klute’ seems semi-improvisatory, and in this Jane Fonda, who is good at confessing, is generally successful. Everybody else merely talks a lot, except for Sutherland, who scarcely talks at all. A normally inventive actor, he is here given precisely the latitude to evoke a romantic figure with all the mysterious intensity of a youthful Calvin Coolidge.”[8]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded Klute 3.5 stars out of a possible 4, writing that while the thriller elements were poorly executed, the performances of Sutherland and especially Fonda carried the film. He suggested that the film should have been titled Bree after her character, who is the soul of the movie and avoids the hooker with a heart of gold stereotype:

"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."[9]

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune was appreciative: “More interesting than the mystery is the character of Bree….the nicest part of her character (due to the script and Miss Fonda’s fine performance) is that this prostitute doesn’t have a heart of gold. She’s a hungup little broad who, when cornered by violence or tenderness, will scratch and bite. Director Alan Pakula’s…crisply edited movie runs too long only in drawing out its conclusion….Sharp eyes will solve the mystery midway thru the film. Miss Fonda’s performance is superior to her most recent work in ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’….Sutherland…presents a controlled posture as the industrious detective. His low profile nicely balances Miss Fonda’s incendiary role.”[10]

Fonda's performance received widespread praise. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus declares: "Fonda makes all the right choices, from the mechanics of her walk and her voice inflection to the penetration of the girl's raging psyche. It is a rare performance."[11]