The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out.
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It’s a kind of sick twist on the sequence in Casablanca (1942) where all the characters in the club are talking about Rick, building up to the big reveal of Humphrey Bogart in his white dinner jacket, except the reveal here is a harrowing shot of Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) standing fully erect in the middle of his cell, as if he has somehow sensed Clarice’s arrival.
Like William Friedkin in The Exorcist, Demme sets up a normal, everyday world -- the cluttered American landscape of shopping centers, trailer parks, and offices (there are precious few exterior shots in the film; this is one claustrophobic movie, though it begins with Clarice running and ends with Lecter strolling) -- and then lets the demon loose.
(While listening to Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs," I was wondering why that voice had such a ring of familiarity.
Like Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs , Welles stretched a small amount of screen time into a starring role.
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(Demme's only previous attempt at a thriller, by the way, was 1979's tedious Hitchcock rip-off Last Embrace.)
…anyone remember his underrated Hitchcock-style thriller "Last Embrace"?
You might even wonder why the maker of "Melvin and Howard" and "Something Wild" would be drawn to such nightmarish stuff, but only if you've forgotten his B-movie roots ("Caged Heat") or his 1979 Hitchcockian excursion, "Last Embrace."
Demme provides Lecter with the kind of lurid, B-movie buildup the director cut his teeth on back in the Seventies with Caged Heat and Fighting Mad.
Demme himself cut his teeth on B-movies like Caged Heat (1974) and Crazy Mama (1975).
You might even wonder why the maker of "Melvin and Howard" and "Something Wild" would be drawn to such nightmarish stuff, but only if you've forgotten his B-movie roots ("Caged Heat") or his 1979 Hitchcockian excursion, "Last Embrace."
Demme himself cut his teeth on B-movies like Caged Heat (1974) and Crazy Mama (1975).
You might even wonder why the maker of "Melvin and Howard" and "Something Wild" would be drawn to such nightmarish stuff, but only if you've forgotten his B-movie roots ("Caged Heat") or his 1979 Hitchcockian excursion, "Last Embrace."
The director, Jonathan Demme, had some solid critical successes behind him for a run of pawky comedies, and a demonstrated rapport with performers - he'd pushed several of them to Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and Mary Steenburgen to a win, for Melvin and Howard - though it seems clear enough that what recommended him to the producers was his time in the trenches under Roger Corman.
Demme is perhaps the director who most uses colors, costumes, and mise-en-scene to emphasize that his movies are statements about American values and sensibilities, e.g., in his The Silence of the Lambs (1991), a serial killer was called Buffalo Bill, and American flags, and red, white, and blue dominated.
Only One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs equaled that feat.
Itwould be 41 years before the next film would do so (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and then sixteen before The Silence of the Lambs won the same.
Even more impressively, it won that award; most impressively of all, it became the third of only three films ever to sweep Oscar's "Big Five" of Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and a Screenplay category ( It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are the other two, and now I'm done peppering you with Oscar trivia).
There's none of the cheerleading for male sexual hostility that you get in The Rookie when Clint Eastwood blows away Sonia Braga and in Total Recall when Arnold Schwarzenegger does the same thing to Sharon Stone.
The worthwhile modern films to follow were such as Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs.
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Could be it's just that I don't like most horror flicks unless they're also funny, like Army of Darkness, or sophisticated, like The Silence of the Lambs .
It's the strongest woman's action role since Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens."