The movie "Klute" somehow escaped my notice. It was released in 1971, when I was in medical school, and not going to a lot of movies, which, in those days was the only way you saw movies, going to a theater, lining up along a New York City street and seeing it when it was in the theater for a few weeks.
But now there are many ways of seeing movies--streaming them and even borrowing the CD's from the library, which is what I did, right here in Hampton, New Hampshire, which seems about as far away from New York City circa 1971 as Pluto is from Earth. And I was living in New York City in 1971, so I remember what that was like, and recognized those places.
Jane Fonda plays a call girl, Bree Daniels, and within minutes of the opening she provides a clinic in great acting, as she is seen in a "meat market," of beautiful women auditioning for a photo marketing campaign to launch a new cosmetic line, and the three marketers work their way down the line of women sitting in chairs, and comment on their faces, hair color as if the women were not even in the room.
A few scenes later, she is in the apartment of a man who apparently is casting about for an actress for a movie or possibly a play, and he is so self absorbed, he takes a phone call while she waits for him to return his attention to her, and several emotions flow across her face: annoyance, desperation, disappointment, hopelessness, as she realizes she is not really in contention for a part in whatever project he may or may not actually ever launch, but she is simply a toy to his outrageous ego.
Whether intended or not, these two scenes go much further to explain the psychology of what drives Bree to sell sex, to hold men in her web, than any of the interminable sessions with her psychiatrist, where she tries to explain her choice to be a prostitute, or as we would now call her, a sex worker. Surely, the dehumanization, the casual cruelty of auditions for modeling gigs, acting parts, the rejection, the utter disregard for the hurt inflicted in the ambitious, desperate, driven women appears far more damaging to the women than selling themselves for sex, where at least they are desired and tacitly reassured they are wonderful in some way.
Whenever I hear people talking about how degrading it is for women to be "forced" into prostitution I think, well, I'm sure for some women it may be, but for others, it may be almost empowering, uplifting even. Who knows? The picture of a call girl in "Klute" at least raises the possibility the choice of "the life," may be a complex one.
The few sex workers I've interviewed struck me as fairly satisfied women, and they did not express any regrets. In fact, when I lived in New York it was the flight attendants (then called "stewardesses") who seemed to be enjoying the freedom of brief "hook ups" the most. And they did not typically get paid for sex, beyond wine and dinner. It was just fun for them, part of flying and living in New York, and maybe a shot at "marrying up."
But the real stunner in Klute is a totally unexpected scene.
This is 1970, when $50 is a lot of money--likely about $500 in today's money, which is what Bree gets paid for having sex. The whole idea of call girls is so titillating to 1970 tastes you can sell an entire movie on the idea of women making a living by selling sex. Sexual repression was so dense in those years it is hardly possible, now 50 years later, to apprehend it.
Bree explains, through the contrivance of sessions with her psychiatrist, how making a living by getting paid for sex allows her to achieve a sense of control of her life: she can earn enough money to afford an apartment on Park Avenue "with leather furniture," and she has a sense of professional accomplishment as she manipulates the fantasies of uptight, "square" men, who could never admit to fantasizing about sex. Mostly, her clients are "family men" out of town, doing business in New York City and looking for an exciting sexual adventure.
The writers, both male, believe they are inside the head of call girls, and they have Bree tell us she feels very little physical pleasure while having sex and has absolutely no emotional reaction to her clients--she is rewarded with money, and with the sense of power and control she obtains manipulating the men.
How true this was for real call girls of that era, we may never know, but it feels reasonable and true in the film.
But the moment that left me thunderstruck comes after we have followed Bree as she arrives at the office and shop of an "old man"--we are told later he is 70!
She arrives in a slinky dress and tells this ancient about her recent trip to Cannes, for the film festival (which we know is all fiction, and of her encounter with a man--not a young man, because she is not attracted to young men--and how he seduced her and how she was consumed with desire for him. She slowly wriggles out of her dress and we see Klute, the private detective who is pursuing her, watching her from another room.
Later, Klute throws this encounter with the old man client in Bree's face as an example of her callousness. And she says there is nothing wrong with her relationship with this client. In fact, she insists there is nothing morally wrong with having sex and getting paid for it by any of her clients, as it hurts nobody and gives satisfaction and pleasure to the clients--a revolutionary idea in 1970.
But this man, in particular, she says started working when he was 14, in the same fashion dress making shop he now owns, has not had more than a week's vacation in 60 years, and after his wife died, started paying Bree to arrive at his shop, where they drink wine and she arouses him with her tales of seduction, but he never touches her.
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Her feeling of complete sympathy for this man, not condescending sympathy, but actual empathy, is so apparent it is shocking. He is the one person in the film to whom Bree clearly feels a strong emotional attachment, and in telling his story and defending him Bree transforms from an avant garde sex worker to a thoroughly admirable human being.
Suddenly, Bree is no longer simply an object of fascination, titillation, but she becomes an agent of possibility, the possibility of human connection. She is someone we can care about, someone we have to care about because she cares about this old man so ardently.
The rest of film is competent, if a little too simplistically resolved, but you never get bored, but what drives the whole thing, for me at least, is the unexpected and shocking revelation about Bree and her feeling for the old man. The scene flashes by, but it is not rushed. It is simple, straightforward and entirely revelatory. Fonda carries it so smoothly, you think you are no longer watching a movie, but a documentary.
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