“Sutherland’s face was not that of a traditional leading man; in old Hollywood he would surely have been cast almost exclusively as villains, like Basil Rathbone. But 1970s New Hollywood was turning convention upside-down, and his Droopy Dog features and ghostly blue eyes proved unexpectedly versatile. He could play goofy or sinister, grotesque or romantic, misfits or normies, with an astutely deployed half-smile that could be amiable or menacing, sometimes both at once.” – Anne Bilson

In the wake of his passing, we pay tribute to Donald Sutherland with a programme of three of his most iconic roles.

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Klute
Alan J. Pakula, 1971, 114 min

“With her Oscar-winning turn in Klute, Jane Fonda reinvented herself 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.” – Janus Films

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Don’t Look Now
Nicholas Roeg, 1973, 110 min

“Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie mesmerize as a British married couple on an extended trip to Venice following a family tragedy. While in that elegantly decaying city, they have a series of inexplicable, terrifying, and increasingly dangerous experiences. A masterpiece from Nicolas Roeg, Don’t Look Now, adapted from a story by Daphne du Maurier, is a brilliantly disturbing tale of the supernatural, as renowned for its innovative editing and haunting cinematography as for its naturalistic eroticism and its unforgettable climax and denouement – one of the great endings in horror history.” – Janus Films

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Casanova
Federico Fellini, 1976, 166 min

“Loosely based on episodes from the life of eighteenth-century Venetian author, scientist, and libertine Giacomo Casanova, the Fellini version portrays its protagonist as an enigmatic and lifeless man who fornicates with one woman after another until, ultimately, he couples with an automaton. Imbued with an air of funereal solemnity and elegance, the film forsakes realism in favour of a stylized romantic pessimism that confronts impotence, failure, sexuality, and exploitation as fully as Pasolini’s Salo. Enhanced by Danilo Donati’s Oscar-winning costume design, Nino Rota’s haunting score, and an extraordinary performance by Donald Sutherland, Casanova is a film of visual daring and pure imagination that renders an elegiac farewell to an era of Italian cinema.” – Harvard Film Archive