The Silence of the Lambs is a
1991 psychological crime/
horror thriller directed by
Jonathan Demme and starring
Jodie Foster,
Anthony Hopkins,
Scott Glenn,
Ted
Levine,
Anthony Heald and
Brooke Smith. It is based on the
novel of the same name by
Thomas Harris, his second to feature
Dr.
Hannibal Lecter, brilliant
psychiatrist and
cannibalistic serial
killer.
In
the film, Clarice Starling, a young
FBI
trainee, seeks the advice of the imprisoned Lecter
on catching a serial killer known only as "Buffalo Bill". The film
won the top
five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor,
Best Director and Best Screenplay. To date, it is the third and
most recent winner of this achievement.
Plot
Clarice Starling is pulled from her
training at the FBI
Academy
at Quantico, Virginia by Jack Crawford of the Bureau's
Behavioral Science Unit. He tasks her with interviewing
Hannibal Lecter, a former
psychiatrist and incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer,
believing Lecter's insight might be useful in the pursuit of
vicious serial killer "Buffalo Bill". Starling travels to the
Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where she is
led by
Dr. Frederick Chilton
to Lecter's solitary quarters. Although initially pleasant and
courteous, Lecter grows impatient with Starling's attempts at
"dissecting" him and rebuffs her. But as she is leaving, one of the
prisoners obscenely flicks semen at her. Infuriated with this
offense, Lecter calls Clarice back and tells her to seek out an old
patient of his. Clarice is led to a storage lot where she discovers
a man's severed head. She returns to Lecter, who tells her that the
man is linked to Buffalo Bill. Though Lecter denies killing this
man, he offers to profile Buffalo Bill if he will be transferred
away from Chilton, whom he dislikes.
In light of Buffalo Bill's recent abduction of a U.S. Senator's
daughter, Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Lecter a fake deal
promising a prison transfer if he provides information that helps
find Buffalo Bill and rescue the abductee. Instead, Lecter begins a
game of
quid pro quo with Starling,
offering comprehensive clues and insights about Buffalo Bill in
exchange for events from Starling's childhood, something she was
advised not to do. Unbeknownst to them, Chilton records the
conversation and reveals Starling's deal as a sham before offering
to transfer Lecter in exchange for a deal of Chilton's own making.
Lecter agrees and is flown to Memphis where he reveals personal
information on Buffalo Bill to federal agents. As the manhunt
begins, Starling visits Lecter at his special cell in a Tennessee
courthouse and confronts him with her decryption of the name he
provided, which was an
anagram. Lecter
refuses Starling's pleas for the truth, as she believes everything
he stated was false, and forces her to recount her traumatic
childhood. She tells him how she was orphaned, relocated to a
relative's farm, discovered a lamb slaughterhouse and failed in an
attempt to rescue one of the lambs. Lecter gives her the case files
on Buffalo Bill, after their conversation is interrupted by Chilton
and the police who escort her from the building. Later that
evening, Lecter manages to escape from his cell and
disappears.
Starling analyzes Lecter's annotations to the case files and
realizes that Buffalo Bill's first victim knew him personally
before he killed her. Starling travels to the victim's hometown and
discovers that Buffalo Bill was a tailor, with dresses and
templates identical to the patches of skin removed from each of his
victims. She telephones Crawford to inform him that Buffalo Bill is
trying to fashion a "woman suit" of real skin, but Crawford is
already en route to make an arrest, having cross-referenced
Lecter's notes with a hospital's archives and finding a man named
Jame Gumb who once applied for a
sex-change operation. Starling continues interviewing friends of
Buffalo Bill's first victim while Crawford leads a SWAT team to
Gumb's address in Illinois. Starling is led to the house of "Jack
Gordon", who she realizes is actually Jame Gumb. She pursues him
into his multi-room basement where she discovers the
recently-abducted Senator's daughter traumatized and in a dry well.
After turning off the basement lights, Gumb stalks Starling in the
dark with night vision goggles but gives his position away when he
cocks his revolver and is shot to death by Starling.
Some time
later at the FBI Academy graduation party, Starling receives a
phone call from Lecter, who is at an airport in Bimini
. He
assures her that he does not plan to pursue her and asks her to
show him the same courtesy, which she says she cannot do. Hannibal
then hangs up the phone, and begins following a newly arrived
Chilton, who is fleeing since Lecter is at large.
Cast
Pre-production
Casting
Michelle Pfeiffer was initially
offered the role of Clarice Starling, but turned it down. She has
said about her rejection of the part, "that was a difficult
decision, but I got nervous about the subject matter." According to
Jonathan Demme, there were 300
applicants for the role of Clarice Starling.
Production
The Silence of the Lambs was distributed by
Orion Pictures;
MGM (who bought Orion in 1997) currently
holds the rights.
Response
Critical
Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster gained overwhelming acclaim with
their portrayals of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, even
though Hopkins' screen time in the entire film is just over 24
minutes. Their respective portrayals won both of them Academy
Awards in 1992, and Hopkins' portrayal, as of 2009, remains the
shortest lead role ever to win an Oscar. (See
List of Academy
Award Records).
The Silence of the Lambs is a
sleeper film. When it was first released its
expected success was so low that it was almost immediately
distributed to movie rental companies rather than to theaters. The
film ultimately received widespread critical acclaim;
Rotten Tomatoes records that
The
Silence of the Lambs received a 96% positive response from
critics. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster also received praise for
their performances.
Roger Ebert
specifically mentioned the "terrifying qualities" of Hannibal
Lecter, and has since recognised the film as a "horror
masterpiece," alongside such classics as
Nosferatu,
Psycho, and
Halloween. However, the film is
also notable for being one of two multi-Oscar winners disapproved
of by Ebert's colleague,
Gene Siskel,
the other being
Unforgiven.
Box office
| Domestic Box Office |
| Opening Weekend |
$13,766,814 |
| % of Total Gross |
10.5% |
| Close Date |
10 October 1991 |
| Total U.S. Gross |
$130,742,922 |
| Worldwide Box Office |
| Total Worldwide Gross |
$272,742,922 |
Awards and honors
| Academy Awards record |
| 1. Best Actress, Jodie Foster |
| 2. Best Actor, Anthony Hopkins |
| 3. Best Director, Jonathan Demme |
| 4. Best Picture, Edward Saxon, Kenneth Utt, Ronald M.
Bozman |
| 5. Best Adapted Screenplay,
Ted Tally |
| Golden Globe Awards record |
| 1. Best Actress, Jodie
Foster |
| BAFTA Awards record |
| 1. Best Actor, Anthony
Hopkins |
| 2. Best Actress, Jodie
Foster |
|
Jonathan Demme won an
Academy Award for Best Director.
Jodie Foster and
Anthony Hopkins both won
Oscars for their roles as Clarice Starling
and Dr. Hannibal Lecter, respectively. The film won additional
Oscars for
Best Adapted
Screenplay and
Best
Picture.
The Silence of the Lambs is only the third
(and most recent) film to win the five most prestigious Academy
Awards (after
It Happened One
Night, 1934 and
One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest, 1975).
The film is second in the department of most Oscar nominations for
a horror film (7) tying the record previously set by
Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte in
1964;
The Exorcist is
in first place with 10 nominations.
Other awards include "best picture" from CHI Awards, the "best
film" from PEO Awards, and
Best Film from
National Board of Review, all in 1991. In 1991, Jonathan Demme was
nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best director. In 1992, Ted
Tally received an
Edgar Award for Best
Motion Picture Screenplay. In 1991 it was nominated for "best film"
at the
BAFTA Awards (
British Academy of
Film and Television Arts). In 1998, it was listed as one of the
100 greatest movies in the
past 100 years by the
American Film Institute.
In 2006 at the Key Art Awards, the original poster for
The
Silence of the Lambs was named best film poster "of the past
35 years".
The Silence of the Lambs placed 7th on
Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments
for Lecter's infamous escape scene. The American Film Institute
named Hannibal Lecter as portrayed by Hopkins
the number one film
villain of all time and Clarice Starling as portrayed by Foster
the sixth
greatest film hero of all time.
In 1991,
Silence of the Lambs was awarded Best Horror Film
of the Year during the 2nd
Horror
Hall of Fame Telecast.
Vincent
Price presented the award to the film's Executive Producer
Gary Goetzman.
- American Film Institute recognition
Homophobia and sexism charges
Upon its release,
The Silence of the Lambs was criticized
by members of the gay community for being what they perceived as
another in a long line of negative on-screen portrayals of
LGBT characters in the absence of any positive
portrayals, but the director Jonathan Demme's next project was the
AIDS-related drama
Philadelphia.
In a 1992 interview with
Playboy magazine, notable
feminist and womens' rights advocate
Betty
Friedan stated, "I thought it was absolutely outrageous that
The Silence of the Lambs won four Oscars. [...] I'm not
saying that the movie shouldn't have been shown. I'm not denying
the movie was an artistic triumph, but it was about the
evisceration, the skinning alive of women. That is what I find
offensive. Not the
Playboy centerfold."
Marketing
Marketing for the film included images of Hopkins and Foster with
Death's-head Hawkmoths
covering their mouths.
In the
images, the death's head on the moths'
backs is not their natural pattern, but a superimposed miniature
image of
Salvador Dalí and
Philippe Halsman's In Voluptas
Mors, which forms the image of a skull from naked
bodies.
In popular culture
The Silence of the Lambs has been
parodied multiple times in the media:
- In 2005, an award-winning Off-Off-Broadway parody was produced
called SILENCE!
The Musical.
- Ezio Greggio created the film The Silence of the Hams where
rookie FBI agent Jo Dee Foster (Billy Zane) goes to Dr. Animal
Cannibal Pizza (Dom DeLuise) to track a serial killer.
- In the feature film Clerks II,
Jay parodies the "I'd fuck me"
scene. This scene was also parodied in the Family Guy episode "Stew-Roids", with Chris in the Buffalo Bill role. Seth Green reportedly based Chris' voice on the
Buffalo Bill character.
- In the 1998 Spanglish novel "Yo-Yo Boing!" by Giannina Braschi a New York City socialite
pays a left-handed compliment to a rival by telling her: "You're
very powerful. That's probably why Makiko compared your expression
to Hannibal the Cannibal in "The Silence of the Lambs."" (ISBN
0-935480978)
- Comedy duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders parodied The Silence
of the Lambs on their show French & Saunders.
References
External links
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