Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Klute
1971 · Alan J. Pakula · Klute on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice how much of every room stays in darkness. (light)
Gordon Willis underexposes his images so heavily that corners and doorways hold pure black, even in scenes that are supposed to be safe or ordinary.
Payoff: The dark itself becomes a threat, since you can never be sure what it's hiding from you.
Watch for shots that place the camera above or behind glass. (camera)
Pakula and Willis repeatedly shoot Bree from a remove, across a room, from a high angle, from behind a window, long before any character is shown watching her.
Payoff: This is what the reading calls the absolute out-of-field: a sense that danger is beyond the frame, located nowhere in particular. In the reading: out-of-field-absolute. Deleuze calls this the absolute out-of-field, a darkness that presses on the frame instead of just continuing it like the next room.
Listen for a voice that has no visible body. (sound)
Bree's world is full of phone calls and recordings, and the thin, distorted quality of tape playback becomes one of the film's most unsettling sounds.
Payoff: A voice with no visible body attached to it is the film's most economical way of building dread.
Watch how long the camera holds on Bree's face in therapy. (performance)
Editor Carl Lerner lets these reaction shots run well past the point of ordinary comfort, so you sit inside her hesitation and guardedness instead of cutting away from it.
Payoff: This is what the reading calls a pure optical situation, a face you simply watch and read rather than a scene that resolves into action. In the reading: pure optical & sound situations. Deleuze calls this a pure optical situation, an opsign, an image that asks to be read rather than acted on.
Notice where men stand when Bree is in the frame. (staging)
Pakula keeps placing male characters at the margins of her space, partly hidden or positioned above her, while the film avoids the wide, objectifying shots that would turn her into spectacle.
Payoff: The staging keeps her legible as a person to be understood rather than a body to be looked at.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Listen to what plays under every scene: a voice, a score, or silence. Notice who is listening.