Klute

Klute (1971) — watch online Alan J. Pakula's psychological thriller that won Jane Fonda the Academy Award for Best Actress. Private detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) arrives in New York to investigate a missing colleague; the only real lead is a call girl named Bree Daniels, who moonlights as a model and wants nothing to do with cops or detectives.

Bree is sharp, self-possessed, and used to running her own life on her own terms. She agrees to talk — then the late-night phone calls start. Silence on the line. Roy Scheider appears as a pimp who brings his own threat into the frame. Pakula shot on real New York locations and kept the camera at odd angles throughout, peering around doorframes and through grates, so the city feels like it's watching back. The script by Andy and Dave Lewis keeps the whodunit mechanics deliberately loose — this is a character study wearing a thriller's clothes.

The first film in Pakula's informal paranoia trilogy (before All the President's Men and The Parallax View), Klute remains a landmark of early-1970s American cinema — a police procedural where the detective is largely irrelevant and the real investigation is a woman trying to figure out who, if anyone, she can trust. Stream Klute (1971) on iFILM.