The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Review 5/5
Manhunter was not necessarily a success at the box office, so producer Dino De Laurentiis ended up giving the rights of the Hannibal Lecter character to Orion Pictures. Meanwhile, screenwriter Ted Tally really wanted to adapt the new Hannibal Lecter book by Thomas Harris only for Harris to give Tally an advanced copy of the new novel. Orion Pictures co-founder Mike Medavoy encouraged Tally to keep on writing the adaptation while Jonathan Demme signed on to direct the film after reading the novel. The name of the novel and film is the Silence of the Lambs, and its immaculate success will be ubiquitously unstoppable throughout the industry at large.
FBI agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) summons FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to meet with former psychiatrist turned serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in jail in order to capture another killer named Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) who kills overweight women only to take their skin and put it on himself. After meeting with Crawford, Starling meets with Lecter in the first of their interrogations together and Lecter wants Starling to give him information about her painful childhood memories in exchange for catching Buffalo Bill. Starling agrees thus allowing Lecter to get inside her head in ways that are psychologically out there. Meanwhile, naive Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith) unknowingly helps Buffalo Bill with his car only for him to kidnap her by taking her to his dungeon. Catherine's mother, U.S. Senator Ruth Martin (Diane Baker) frantically sends the FBI to stop Buffalo Bill and save Catherine and Clarice continues to talk to Lecter on how to get Buffalo Bill as she bravely tries to overcome her demons for the sake of going through dangerous ground in the process.
The Silence of the Lambs was based on the novel by Thomas Harris. Harris's novel was a huge success but was criticized for being transphobic due to the portrayal of Buffalo Bill. Harris thought that Bill was not a true transsexual, and the novel's rights were bought by Orion. Academy Award winning actor Gene Hackman was originally supposed to direct and star in the Silence of the Lambs, so the 500,000 cost of rights was supposed to be split between Hackman and Orion. However, Hackmann dropped out of the project and was replaced by Jonathan Demme as director.
After Demme agreed to direct, the movie was quickly developed without no revisions whatsoever and the movie began filming in November of 1989. When it came to the casting, Jodie Foster really was enamored with the book because of her interest of playing Clarice Starling. Demme, however, thought that Foster was not right for the part of Starling considering that he wanted to work with Michelle Pfeiffer again after her Academy Award nominated performance in his Married to the Mob. Pfeiffer turned down the film as a result of not liking the violent subject matter and similarly Meg Ryan turned down the movie for the exact same reason too.
Foster was just coming out of her Oscar win for her performance in director Jonathan Kaplan's The Accused (1988) and she eventually received the role of Clarice Starling as a result of her passion for the role. For the role of Hannibal Lecter, Sean Connery originally was chosen to play Lecter but turned it down. After watching his performance for David Lynch's, the Elephant Man (1980), Demme thought that Anthony Hopkins would be right for the part of Lecter only for Hopkins to read the script thus adoring it and getting the part after having dinner with Demme.
Hopkins was inspired by the villain HAL 9000 played by Douglas Rain from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) along with being inspired by the vocal tone of Author Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood). Interestingly enough, Hopkins distanced himself from Jodie Foster because she won an Oscar to where he felt very intimidated by her. Hopkins will go on to reprise his role as Hannibal Lecter in two sequels known as Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001) (Julianne Moore takes over Jodie Foster's role as Clarice) and Brett Ratner's Red Dragon (2002) (with Edward Norton taking over William Peterson's role as Will Graham).
After Gene Hackman turned down the part of Jack Crawford, Scott Glenn (Philip Kaufman's the Right Stuff (1983)) ended up getting the role and began basing the role on John E. Douglas who he met. Douglas taught Glenn about what the Quantico facility is and had Glenn hear recordings of two serial killers raping a 16-year-old girl only for Glenn to be more aware of the death penalty due to him crying over the recording.
The movie was filmed in Pennsylvania along with some scenes that were filmed in northern West Virginia in the process. Production designer Kristi Zea (worked with Demme for Married to the Mob) had doubts about the tough material but once Demme told her about the woman-centric angle, she began to base her production design on the disturbing paintings of Francis Bacon. Her design on Buffalo Bill's lair was inspired by serial killer Gary M. Heidnik along with his kidnappings and murders. Zea previously worked with Martin Scorsese for Goodfellas (1990) and was nominated later for best production design for Sam Mendes's Revolutionary Road (2008). In addition, Zea later worked with Demme again in Philadelphia (1993) and Beloved (1998).
By the time the movie was released on Valentine's Day 1991 on February 14th, it became a critical and commercial success only to debut at number one at the box office to where it stayed there for five weeks. Even though the movie was critically successful among the critics, there was a Siskel and Ebert episode in which Ebert gave a thumbs up while Siskel gave a thumbs down because of how the movie did not seem to appeal to him as it did to other critics. Ebert later put the movie in his Great Movies list and speaking of Siskel, Silence along with Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven were two Best Picture winners that he did not like at all.
As far as the Oscars were concerned, Silence was the third movie to win the Top Five Oscars and they are Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress at the 1992 Academy Awards. The other two films that won the Top Five Oscars are Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934). So far these are the only three films to win the Top Five Oscars still to this day.
Silence was featured in AFI's lists of 100 Greatest Movies in 1998 and 2007 at #65 for the 1998 list and at #74 for the 2007 list. In addition, it was #5 on AFI's list of 100 Thrills along with Heroes for Clarice Starling at # 6, Villains for Hannibal Lecter at # 1 and # 21 on their 100 Movie Quotes List. The Library of Congress' National Film Registry selected it for preservation in 2011 for its impact in the world of cinema.
All of the accolades are worth it considering that the Silence of the Lambs is a great movie that is scary without being overwrought along with emotionally moving in a way that keeps it from being overtly heartless.
The direction from the late Jonathan Demme was superlative to where I was put in the edge of my seat in terms of scaring me in a way that felt real and believable as opposed to being cartoonish and needlessly violent. Also, the direction surprisingly moved me as well to where I related to the idea of dealing with inner demons in the midst of the terror with no sentimentality whatsoever.
Ted Tally's (Brian Gibson's the Juror (1996) with Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin) screenplay was able to make me understand the world of sexism, corruption along with the true terror of serial killers with his great well-written dialogue that made me get involved in the material as if I was living in and experiencing the world as it is.
Tak Fujimoto's (John Hughes's Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)) cinematography was appropriately terrifying in that it felt scary and chilling because of how he used drab and creepy imagery and lighting in order to truly terrify me when it came to making me get caught in the creepy atmosphere thus having me get lost and frighteningly caught up in his great compositions. Plus, the use of close ups made me feel like I was the characters by looking at the movie from their perspective due to the great cinematography.
Kristi Zea's production design was superlatively well done and quite scaringly believable when it came to making me believe that the world is truly scary and ubiquitously hard from the designs of the FBI building, the spooky jail cells and cages of Hannibal Lecter along with the horrifyingly creative dungeon and lair of Buffalo Bill. As a result of Zea's well-crafted design, I felt fascinatingly scared and interested in the lives of serial killers and their victims along with the hardships of being a woman struggling with sexism and inner demons too.
Howard Shore's (Penny Marshall's Big (1988) along with composing Martin Scorsese's films and David Cronenberg's films since 1979) score is so well-composed considering that it added not only thrills to the film but also character as well. The score is also fun to listen to only for me to enjoy it as well.
The acting was terrific and great. Jodie Foster was so tremendous and spectacular as Clarice Starling by allowing me to root and care for her to where it felt like I was a friend of hers who related to her struggles of demons while also encouraging her to seek justice by saving lives. Foster's great acting truly made me believe Starling as a tough but vulnerable woman.
Anthony Hopkins was great and wonderful as Lecter as he was intellectually creepy and cunning due to how he used his intelligence to take advantage of his victims including Starling in a way that made him scarier than someone who uses overtly uses violence to get the job done. Ted Levine's Buffalo Bill may not top Lecter as a villain, but he still does a great job nonetheless as he makes Bill creepy in an insecure way that keeps him from being too one sided as a killer.
Scott Glenn proves to be subtlety great as Jack Crawford in terms of making me understand him as someone who not only gives orders to Starling and others but also feels like a father figure to them as well due to his great acting. In addition, Brooke Smith surprisingly does well as Catherine because on the surface, Catherine is a typical victim but due to her acting, she makes me believe that she is a hero who could take care of herself in the midst of being Buffalo Bill's prisoner.
As much as I love the movie, it would have been cooler if the ending was more thrilling as the rest of the movie but regardless, the Silence of the Lambs will always be one of my favorite movies of all time as it will always have the power to scare me and move me at the same time. God bless.
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