For thirty years Norman Bates reigned unopposed as the number one movie villain of all time. But in 1991 along came Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant Baltimore psychiatrist, to challenge Bates for the on-screen mantle of unparalleled depravity. Cultured and erudite, Lecter reads Marcus Aurelius, listens to classical music, and drinks only the finest wine ~a glass of Chianti to go along with fava beans and liver. Oh.... and by the way, did I forget to mention that he's a cannibalistic serial killer?
Thomas Harris' diabolical shrink first appeared in the book "Red Dragon", adapted quite decently by Michael Mann in 1986 and retitled MANHUNTER ~later remade less satisfactory in 2002 under its original title. Despite Mann's film not making much of a splash at the time, plans were nonetheless underway to bring Harris' second novel "Silence Of The Lambs" to the screen. The unlikely person interested in turning it into a motion picture was Gene Hackman, who hoped to make this his directorial debut. Orion Pictures was onboard, but Hackman soon had cold feet over the grisly subject matter and dropped out. As writer Ted Tally was consuming himself with putting together a solid screenplay, Orion succeeded in convincing Jonathan Demme to direct.
The first actress slated to play Clarice Starling was Michelle Pfeiffer and, for the same reasons as Hackman, also had her apprehensions and bowed out. Replacing Pfeiffer was Jodie Foster, who'd just won an Oscar for portraying a rape victim in THE ACCUSED. As for Lecter, the original choice was Sean Connery (!), who declined. No knock against Connery, but that was a good thing too. Try to visualize, if you can, 007 saying "I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner". Doesn't quite roll off the tongue so fluidly, does it?
The next one considered was Anthony Hopkins, based largely on his performance in THE ELEPHANT MAN, a choice which I thought was odd! His character of Dr Frederick Treves was a decent, compassionate man of medicine who transformed one person's heartbreakingly miserable life around for the better, whereas Hannibal Lecter possesses all the compassion of a Komodo dragon. It took the actor only ten pages of reading the script before realizing this was the best part he'd ever read, and heartily agreed to play Lecter. To capture the right accent for his character he based the voice partially on Katharine Hepburn and Truman Capote.
The heroine of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee at Quantico nearing the conclusion of her apprenticeship. A native of rural West Virginia, Clarice was orphaned as a young girl when her widowed policeman father was shot to death in the line of duty. Jack Crawford, her superior in the Behavioural Sciences department assigns her to conduct an interview with one of the most infamous serial killers in the country. Crawford warns her in advance not to reveal anything personal to him, telling her "Believe me, Starling, you don't want Hannibal Lecter inside your head".
Dr Lecter's home for the last decade has been a Baltimore asylum for the criminally insane. He is so dangerous that he and three other inmates are segregated from the general population, which illustrates just how evil he truly is. Prior to her meeting him, Dr Chilton, the director of the institution, shows Clarice a photograph of an unfortunate staffer who made the grave mistake of turning her back to him.
We never actually see what Lecter did to the woman. With Demme's camera in an upward position facing towards Clarice, our heroine's stoic, yet revealing, reaction is enough to put our imaginations into overdrive....and give us the willies!!! Unlike the other garden variety psychos displaying the usual clichéd mannerisms, Lecter simply greets her with a casual, disarming "Good morning". Hopkins' phrasing of those two words will put a chill in the audience's spines.
Starling has been sent in the hopes that the not-so-good doctor will provide a psychological profile of Buffalo Bill, a serial killer who has been abducting and murdering young women. Intrigued by his visitor, Lecter begins insinuating himself into her psyche by giving an extraordinary accurate character analysis. Their cat-and-mouse interaction is fascinating to watch as Lecter alternates between co-operation ~somewhat~ and toying with her emotions.
Lecter's cryptic clues lead Clarice to the discovery of a severed head belonging to one of his former patients. Though admitting to preserving the cranium prior to his incarceration, Lecter insists he was not the killer. However, he does know the identity of the dead man's lover, the suspect known only as Buffalo Bill. He simply wants to torment everyone by taking his own sweet time before disclosing it.
The stakes suddenly get higher in the psychological chess match between Lecter and Starling. Buffalo Bill's next victim happens to be the missing daughter of a Tennessee senator. With pressure now coming from Washington, Clarice approaches Lecter with a (phony) offer of a transfer in exchange for his identification of the serial killer. Unfortunately, this quid pro quo is overhead by Chilton, a womanizing creep whose self-love is more than just a summer romance. His ego will lead to subsequent events that nothing positive will come of.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is undeniably Jonathan Demme's finest hour. One of his visual trademarks is having his actors speaking directly into the camera, giving us the impression that we're the ones actually interacting with them, and thus putting us in the other person's shoes. Demme's technique is not always effective , but it certainly works with THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS because having Hannibal Lecter, in particular, addressing us face-to-face is enough to put us off balance.
In the decades since THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, critics and audiences alike have rhapsodized endlessly about the tit for tat exchanges between Lecter and Starling. It's an intriguing matchup for sure; he's a remorseless monster, yet somehow this tenacious Southern belle has tapped into his not-so-beautiful mind just as much he has with hers. As he admires Clarice's steely perseverance within a male dominated profession, she may be the only person in the world whom Lecter genuinely wishes no harm to come towards. And his ingenious escape at the ¾ mark makes for one of the tensest scenes in cinema history.
For all of its bona fide moments of fright, one aspect which I think Demme doesn't get enough praise for is his vivid depiction of America's rust belt. Thanks to the exceptional work by production designer Kristi Zea and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, Demme gives us the most bleakly evocative portrait of lower middle class poverty since BONNIE AND CLYDE.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS became only the third movie to capture the 5 major Academy Awards: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Ted Tally's first rate adaptation. Hopkins was knighted shortly after his triumph, and when asked by a reporter which honor was more satisfying, he replied "The Oscar. It changed my life". For Foster, this was her second win, but this performance was so towering that I'm not sure if anyone other than the most intrepid cinephile would remember what film her first Oscar was for.
Back in 1991, I remember reading a review of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS where the writer of the article proclaimed that Hannibal Lecter may be the greatest movie villain of all time. I thought that was quite an audacious pronouncement for anybody to make. The film was still going through a strong theatrical run, and conventional cinema wisdom assumed that nobody would ever unseat Hitchcock's ultimate mama's boy. But as it turned out, that critic, whoever he or she was, ended up having the last laugh. 🔚
Thomas Harris' diabolical shrink first appeared in the book "Red Dragon", adapted quite decently by Michael Mann in 1986 and retitled MANHUNTER ~later remade less satisfactory in 2002 under its original title. Despite Mann's film not making much of a splash at the time, plans were nonetheless underway to bring Harris' second novel "Silence Of The Lambs" to the screen. The unlikely person interested in turning it into a motion picture was Gene Hackman, who hoped to make this his directorial debut. Orion Pictures was onboard, but Hackman soon had cold feet over the grisly subject matter and dropped out. As writer Ted Tally was consuming himself with putting together a solid screenplay, Orion succeeded in convincing Jonathan Demme to direct.
The first actress slated to play Clarice Starling was Michelle Pfeiffer and, for the same reasons as Hackman, also had her apprehensions and bowed out. Replacing Pfeiffer was Jodie Foster, who'd just won an Oscar for portraying a rape victim in THE ACCUSED. As for Lecter, the original choice was Sean Connery (!), who declined. No knock against Connery, but that was a good thing too. Try to visualize, if you can, 007 saying "I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner". Doesn't quite roll off the tongue so fluidly, does it?
The next one considered was Anthony Hopkins, based largely on his performance in THE ELEPHANT MAN, a choice which I thought was odd! His character of Dr Frederick Treves was a decent, compassionate man of medicine who transformed one person's heartbreakingly miserable life around for the better, whereas Hannibal Lecter possesses all the compassion of a Komodo dragon. It took the actor only ten pages of reading the script before realizing this was the best part he'd ever read, and heartily agreed to play Lecter. To capture the right accent for his character he based the voice partially on Katharine Hepburn and Truman Capote.
The heroine of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee at Quantico nearing the conclusion of her apprenticeship. A native of rural West Virginia, Clarice was orphaned as a young girl when her widowed policeman father was shot to death in the line of duty. Jack Crawford, her superior in the Behavioural Sciences department assigns her to conduct an interview with one of the most infamous serial killers in the country. Crawford warns her in advance not to reveal anything personal to him, telling her "Believe me, Starling, you don't want Hannibal Lecter inside your head".
Dr Lecter's home for the last decade has been a Baltimore asylum for the criminally insane. He is so dangerous that he and three other inmates are segregated from the general population, which illustrates just how evil he truly is. Prior to her meeting him, Dr Chilton, the director of the institution, shows Clarice a photograph of an unfortunate staffer who made the grave mistake of turning her back to him.
We never actually see what Lecter did to the woman. With Demme's camera in an upward position facing towards Clarice, our heroine's stoic, yet revealing, reaction is enough to put our imaginations into overdrive....and give us the willies!!! Unlike the other garden variety psychos displaying the usual clichéd mannerisms, Lecter simply greets her with a casual, disarming "Good morning". Hopkins' phrasing of those two words will put a chill in the audience's spines.
Starling has been sent in the hopes that the not-so-good doctor will provide a psychological profile of Buffalo Bill, a serial killer who has been abducting and murdering young women. Intrigued by his visitor, Lecter begins insinuating himself into her psyche by giving an extraordinary accurate character analysis. Their cat-and-mouse interaction is fascinating to watch as Lecter alternates between co-operation ~somewhat~ and toying with her emotions.
Lecter's cryptic clues lead Clarice to the discovery of a severed head belonging to one of his former patients. Though admitting to preserving the cranium prior to his incarceration, Lecter insists he was not the killer. However, he does know the identity of the dead man's lover, the suspect known only as Buffalo Bill. He simply wants to torment everyone by taking his own sweet time before disclosing it.
The stakes suddenly get higher in the psychological chess match between Lecter and Starling. Buffalo Bill's next victim happens to be the missing daughter of a Tennessee senator. With pressure now coming from Washington, Clarice approaches Lecter with a (phony) offer of a transfer in exchange for his identification of the serial killer. Unfortunately, this quid pro quo is overhead by Chilton, a womanizing creep whose self-love is more than just a summer romance. His ego will lead to subsequent events that nothing positive will come of.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is undeniably Jonathan Demme's finest hour. One of his visual trademarks is having his actors speaking directly into the camera, giving us the impression that we're the ones actually interacting with them, and thus putting us in the other person's shoes. Demme's technique is not always effective , but it certainly works with THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS because having Hannibal Lecter, in particular, addressing us face-to-face is enough to put us off balance.
In the decades since THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, critics and audiences alike have rhapsodized endlessly about the tit for tat exchanges between Lecter and Starling. It's an intriguing matchup for sure; he's a remorseless monster, yet somehow this tenacious Southern belle has tapped into his not-so-beautiful mind just as much he has with hers. As he admires Clarice's steely perseverance within a male dominated profession, she may be the only person in the world whom Lecter genuinely wishes no harm to come towards. And his ingenious escape at the ¾ mark makes for one of the tensest scenes in cinema history.
For all of its bona fide moments of fright, one aspect which I think Demme doesn't get enough praise for is his vivid depiction of America's rust belt. Thanks to the exceptional work by production designer Kristi Zea and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, Demme gives us the most bleakly evocative portrait of lower middle class poverty since BONNIE AND CLYDE.
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS became only the third movie to capture the 5 major Academy Awards: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Ted Tally's first rate adaptation. Hopkins was knighted shortly after his triumph, and when asked by a reporter which honor was more satisfying, he replied "The Oscar. It changed my life". For Foster, this was her second win, but this performance was so towering that I'm not sure if anyone other than the most intrepid cinephile would remember what film her first Oscar was for.
Back in 1991, I remember reading a review of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS where the writer of the article proclaimed that Hannibal Lecter may be the greatest movie villain of all time. I thought that was quite an audacious pronouncement for anybody to make. The film was still going through a strong theatrical run, and conventional cinema wisdom assumed that nobody would ever unseat Hitchcock's ultimate mama's boy. But as it turned out, that critic, whoever he or she was, ended up having the last laugh. 🔚