Klute (1971)

[Akijama]

SPECIAL FEATURES
New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by camera operator Michael Chapman, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New conversation between actors Jane Fonda and Illeana Douglas
New documentary about Klute and director Alan J. Pakula by filmmaker Matthew Miele, featuring scholars, filmmakers, and Pakula’s family and friends
The Look of “Klute,” a new interview with writer Amy Fine Collins
Archival interviews with Pakula and Fonda
“Klute” in New York, a short documentary made during the shooting of the film
PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris and excerpts from a 1972 interview with Pakula

With her Oscar-winning turn in Klute, Jane Fonda arrived full-fledged as a new kind of movie star. Bringing nervy audacity and counterculture style to the role of Bree Daniels—a call girl and aspiring actor who becomes the focal point of a missing-person investigation when detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) turns up at her door—Fonda made the film her own, putting an independent woman and escort on-screen with a frankness that had not yet been attempted in Hollywood. Suffused with paranoia by the conspiracy-thriller specialist Alan J. Pakula, and lensed by master cinematographer Gordon Willis, Klute is a character study thick with dread, capturing the mood of early-1970s New York and the predicament of a woman trying to find her own way on the fringes of society.

https://www.criterion.com/films/28708-klute

[Show spoiler]Probably the most obvious clue from Criterions NY drawing.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...stcount=182898

K(lute)

[SeanJoyce]

Never got the fuss about this one.

[Abdrewes]

Love this movie!!!

[Richard--W]

Originally Posted by Akijama

Probably the most obvious clue from Criterions NY drawing.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...stcount=182898

K(lute)

Klute is a long overdue on bluray. This film is a real feast for the eyes the
way color, light, shadow, darkness, glass, reflections are used to guide the
eye and create mystery. Much was written and studied about how it was
photographed. It was considered quite innovative in the '70s.


If your guess is correct it will be interesting to see how Criterion grades the
transfer. Some people will disagree, but Gordon "prince of darkness" Willis'
highly specialized lighting has not fared well under digital scanning. I thought
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (also a Criterion), The Long Goodbye and The
Godfather fell a little short of where they should be.

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by Richard--W

I thought
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (also a Criterion), The Long Goodbye and The
Godfather fell a little short of where they should be.

Vilmos Zsigmond was the cinematographer for "The Long Goodbye" and "McCabe & Mrs. Miller".

[Gacivory]

I thought Gordon Willis supervised The Godfather transfers?

[LordSummerIsle]

I had forgotten about Klute. Now that you say it, definitely!

[Richard--W]

You're right of course. I don't know what I was thinking. Those
two Vilmos Zsigmond films haven't fared too well, either.

I hope Criterion will get around to The Parallax View sooner
rather than later. That one is not as darkly lit as either Klute
or The Godfather films and therefor not as problematic in
the digital realm. I've collected a number of interviews and a
seminar transcript in which Willis discussed his methods. It
was applicable in the days of 35mm film and photochemistry.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Gacivory

I thought Gordon Willis supervised The Godfather transfers?

He did, and by some accounts he was happier with the data presentations than he was with the new 35mm prints as they didn't have the range to handle the darkness of the imagery. They look gorgeous on Blu-ray.

[Richard--W]

Originally Posted by Gacivory

I thought Gordon Willis supervised The Godfather transfers?

Through a proxy. An assistant. He no longer had the eyesight to judge. Many
experts who spent a lot of time with the films don't think it came out right.

There is an incredible coffee-table book published by Taschen called
The Godfather Family Album. It consists of the on-set still photos taken by
Steve Shapiro. He shot stills under Willis' lighting conditions. The mood and
aesthetic of the first film is conveyed in these images. In interviews Willis
commented that the film isn't supposed to look green or yellow, although
there is some of that in these print images. But it gets the darkness and
shadow right. The exposure seems closer to how the film looked than the
blu-rays do sometimes. In a couple of images you can see the soft-light
boxes Willis invented mounted high up on the ceiling to get that specialized
look on the faces. Link:

The Godfather Family Album

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Richard--W

Through a proxy. An assistant. He no longer had the eyesight to judge. Many
experts who spent a lot of time with the films don't think it came out right.

There is an incredible coffee-table book published by Taschen called
The Godfather Family Album. It consists of the on-set still photos taken by
Steve Shapiro. He shot stills under Willis' lighting conditions. The mood and
aesthetic of the first film is conveyed in these images. In interviews Willis
commented that the film isn't supposed to look green or yellow, although
there is some of that in these print images. But it gets the darkness and
shadow light. The exposure seems closer to how the film looked than the
blu-rays do sometimes. In a couple of images you can see the soft-light
boxes Willis invented mounted high up on the ceiling to get that specialized
look on the faces. Link:

The Godfather Family Album

And yet in the book Masters of Light (from the early '80s) Willis references the yellow look several times, they even lit it with tungsten lamps a few hundred degrees below the standard 3200K to push it even warmer.

[Gacivory]

I saw The Godfather on film a couple of times, in good looking prints, and it didn’t look drastically different from the home video releases. I wasn’t taking mental notes to go home and directly compare.

[cheez avenger]

Awesome! That's Alan Pakula's holy trilogy of paranoia flicks:

Klute
Parallax View
All the President's Men

[CarsonDyle]

I love this film so much. Never understood why it isn't more acclaimed.

[Richard--W]

Originally Posted by CarsonDyle

I love this film so much. Never understood why it isn't more acclaimed.

It is acclaimed. Or it was when it was new. Maybe people have forgotten.

I'm really looking forward to the blu-ray.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Gacivory

I saw The Godfather on film a couple of times, in good looking prints, and it didn’t look drastically different from the home video releases. I wasn’t taking mental notes to go home and directly compare.

Just for reference:

Originally Posted by Masters of Light

[Schaefer & Salvato] The Godfather and The Godfather II were, to the best of my knowledge, among the first films to utilize relatively low light levels. How did you evolve that kind of lighting philosophy and how did you come to give it a full application on The Godfather and an even greater application on The Godfather II?

[Gordon Willis] That technique or that approach to the movie visually just came out of a thought process. And the process, in my mind, was based on evil; it was based on the soul of the picture. I guess the best example of it, based on relativity, was the wedding where outside in the garden there was a very sunny, almost Kodachromey, 1942 kind of feel to it. Then when we cut inside the house with Brando, it was very down and very ominous. So while one thing was happening out here, another thing, in fact, was happening inside. And so it was a very simple philosophy. However, the overall look of The Godfather was a kind of forties New York grit, with the exception of the scenes in Sicily. The Godfather II is basically the same approach only more romantic. We had period work to deal with. My thought was that I wanted to keep all of the work tied together in a linear fashion. The thing that ultimately kept it together was the same colour structure throughout. Even though I changed the lighting and the shot structure a lot between the periods, I felt it was best to just hold this yellow tone through all of it. And that way, there would be one thread that united all of it. I wanted to hang on to the essence of The Godfather I. In Godfather II, it was the same thing; I used yellow. In fact, yellow broke out like the plague after I did it on that picture. And today, people still apply it. It's applied indiscriminately, I might add. Because doing that does not automatically make it a period movie. The photographic structure, the lighting structure and the set structure have to come together in the same fashion, otherwise it's meaningless.

I understand what you're saying in that context, but you don't generally like the colour of yellow, do you?

I used the term yellow; it's really kind of an amber.

[Richard--W]

Originally Posted by cheez avenger

Awesome! That's Alan Pakula's holy trilogy of paranoia flicks:

Klute
Parallax View
All the President's Men

Don't forget Rollover (1981). Although it wasn't photographed by Gordon Willis
it's as paranoid as paranoid gets. Think of it as a postscript to the paranoia
trilogy. An under-estimated film and surprisingly relevant to the current situation.
It needs a blu-ray, too.

[cheez avenger]

Originally Posted by Richard--W

Don't forget Rollover (1981). Although it wasn't photographed by Gordon Willis
it's as paranoid as paranoid gets. Think of it as a postscript to the paranoia
trilogy. An under-estimated film and surprisingly relevant to the current situation.
It needs a blu-ray, too.

Oh wow, never heard of Rollover. I'll have to check it out!

[Richard--W]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

And yet in the book Masters of Light (from the early '80s) Willis references the yellow look several times, they even lit it with tungsten lamps a few hundred degrees below the standard 3200K to push it even warmer.

I have Masters of Light although I haven't read it in ages. As I recall Willis said
that he speaks of yellow in laboratory terms, but in actual fact he means amber,
or was it gold. I'd have to go back and read it again. But his dislike of yellow is
corroborated in other interviews he gave and in that famous seminar he taught
on the lightboxes and exposures for this formulation and that formulation
neither of which exist anymore.

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by Richard--W

I have Masters of Light although I haven't read it in ages. As I recall Willis said
that he speaks of yellow in laboratory terms, but in actual fact he means amber,
or was it gold. I'd have to go back and read it again. But his dislike of yellow is
corroborated in other interviews he gave and in that famous seminar he taught
on the lightboxes and exposures for this formulation and that formulation
neither of which exist anymore.

In the quote Geoff posted, Willis does say it’s more of an Amber. It was right there at the bottom after the first answer.