'Klute': Plot Summary

This is a plot summary of director Alan Pakula's film 'Klute'.

This is a film summary of 1971's 'Klute,' one of my favorite films from my favorite decade. 

'Klute' directed by Alan Pakula

A Pennsylvania executive named Tom Grunemann vanishes. His wife and friends are left with no clues except for obscene letters he sent to a New York prostitute named Bree Daniels. 

Bree is rejected at a casting call. Later, she meets an out of town john at his hotel room. The client is shy but Bree gets him to relax and open up. She returns to her apartment and someone calls her breathing without identifying himself.

Peter Cable hires a cop named John Klute to investigate Grunemann’s disappearance, to go to New York and question Bree Daniels who is the last person to correspond with the executive who is also suspected of murdering 2 prostitutes.  

Klute rents the basement of the apartment where Bree lives. He taps her phone and records a number of her transactions. He blackmails Bree with tapes he recorded off her phone. He shows her a picture of Grunemann but she has had so many johns that she can’t recall his face. But she does remember the john that beat her, a john her pimp named Frank set her up with. A john referred to Frank by a jealous whore named Jane McKenna who is now dead. But there is another whore named Arlyn Page who also dated the abusive john. Klute and Bree visit a madam Arlyn worked for but, according to the woman, Arlyn is a junkie and has fallen off the map. 

Bree continues to get ‘breather calls.’ She shows up at Klute’s apartment afraid and he lets her sleep at his place. In the middle of the night, they make love.

Klute and Bree find Arlyn and her junkie boyfriend in a room in a rundown neighborhood waiting for a drug delivery. But when Cappie sees Klute and Bree, he becomes spooked and runs away leaving Arlyn and her boyfriend miserable. In a high-rise office, Peter cable plays a tape he’d recorded of him and one of the dead prostitutes. 

To Klute’s dismay, Bree returns to her old pimp and relapses back to her drug habit. Klute finds her later at her place. She is strung out and her apartment is a mess. He straightens up her apartment and watches over her until she gets all of the dope out of her system.

The police fish Arlene’s corpse out of the harbor. Klute rules out Grunemann. He now believes the killer is someone close to Grunemman. And the only person who can identify the killer is Bree. With Arlyn dead, Klute keeps tabs on Klute’s comings and goings. He tells her he worries about her. Bree tells her therapist that she met a guy who is making her feel again. 

Klute and Bree pick over produce at a farmer’s market. Later, they return to her apartment and find it in shambles. Someone cut up all of her clothes and came in a pair of her panties. Bree moves in with Klute. 

Klute and the police analyze the typed letters of everyone involved with the case, including Klute’s. But the only typed letters matching the style of Grunemann’s letters are those belonging to Peter Cable. Klute baits Cable with a lie, asking him for $500.00 dollars to buy Jane McKenna’s address book. The book contains all of her johns and possibly the DNA of the john who broke into Bree’s apartment and left semen in a pair of her panties.  

Feeling vulnerable again, Bree returns to Frank. Klute attacks Frank and Bree stabs Klute with a pair of scissors. Klute is able to avoid being stabbed and leaves Bree’s apartment. She comes to her senses and goes to see her therapist who isn’t available. Bree is desperate for someone to talk with.

Peter Cable cancels his scheduled flight to Pennsylvania to find Bree who has Jane McKenna’s address book. Klute finds out about Cable’s cancelled flight and searches for Bree. 

She stops by the garment factory to talk to Mr. Goldfarb who left money for Bree with his secretary. 

Bree waits for Goldfarb at the empty plant, unaware that Cable is also there. He reveals himself and confesses to murdering Jane McKenna, Arlyn Page, and Tom Grunemann. Grunemann caught him red-handed after he’d beaten Jane McKenna. Cable killed Grunemann to keep him from reporting the beating.

Cable accuses Bree of bringing out his sickness. He plays a tape recording of him torturing Arlyn Page. When the tape stops, he attacks Bree, chokes her, but Klute appears. Cable jumps through a plate glass window and falls to his death. Bree moves out of her apartment and leaves New York.