Concrete Playground

Long before the perfect teeth and diamond necklaces of Pretty Woman there was Klute (1971).  A landmark film for New Hollywood, the film centres around the New York prostitute Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda), a psychologically lost but certainly prodigious woman who finds herself embroiled in a missing persons case, and to her surprise, a thorny predicament.

Fonda, who received an Oscar for her performance as Daniels, manages to fold an emotionally complicated character together in such a way so as to make it both utterly believable that she would  a) be a prostitute and b) have to escape the malicious intent of a man who wishes to silence her indefinitely. Directed by Alan J Pakula, the film is triumph for cinematographic innovation with its stripped back overhead lighting and unusual camera work. Best seen on a screen bigger than the one you're reading this on.