Some critics have called Alan J. Pakula’s neo-noir Klute (1971) progressive and radical in its positive depiction of
an independent, sexually liberated woman; others have argued that the construction
of the female character is no different than that found in classic noir, and
that Klute actually operates in a
profoundly anti-feminist way. This essay seeks to explore the reasons behind these
diverging interpretations, locating the source of the difficulty in assessing the
main female character’s power over the narrative in the disjunctive
relationship between sound and image in the film. In marked contrast to the
classic noir cycle, in Klute the
story is filtered through the subjectivity of the female character, who poses a
distinctive challenge to the patriarchal order and the foundation of the
heterosexual couple. At the same time, there is a disconnect between the words
she speaks in voiceover and the actions we see unfold onscreen that actively
works to undermine her point of view. It becomes increasingly difficult, then,
to say with any certainty whether the film’s central female protagonist can be
considered an active subject or a passive object presented for the male gaze.
