THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

1991
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS




'Silence of the Lambs'

By VINCENT CANBY


The film was the major prestiege picture of the year. sweeping Best Picture, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Director (Jonathan Demme), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally) - in the Academy's history,
that remarkable feat has only been duplicated twice before [It Happened One Night (1934), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)]. Demme's
Best Director Oscar win made him the first (and only) film-maker to have ever won for a thriller. A shocking truth about just how prissy the Academy of Motion picture arts and sciences can be. Prissy and unresponsive to the high quality of the popular audience. I mean, look how stubborn they are about the Oscar show itself, with it's interminable alwards to unknowns.




Foster's strong, yet restrained, vulnerable female lead role
in the much talked-about film was intensified by public knowledge of her real-life associations as a victim with assassin John Hinckley and her role as
child-prostitute Iris opposite Robert De Niro's portrayal of a crazed killer in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976). She has not maintained the quality hoped for, althouth a cameo in The Inside Man shows us what we have been missing. Was she being punished for refusing the role in the Lambs sequel?




Hannibal Lecter, a serial killer nicknamed Hannibal the Cannibal, once liked to feast on his victims, daintily, in a meal designed to complement the particular nature of the main dish. He would, for example, choose a "nice" Chianti to accompany a savory liver. A fine Bordeaux would compete.

Hannibal is a brilliant if bent psychiatrist, now under lock and key in a maximum-security facility.

Still at large, though, is a new serial killer, known as Buffalo Bill for reasons that can't be reported here. Bill's habit is to skin his victims.

At the beginning of "The Silence of the Lambs," Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), the F.B.I.'s man in charge of Bill's case, seeks the assistance of a bright young agent, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster).

Her assignment: to interview Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), arouse his interest and secure his help in drawing a psychological profile of the new killer.

The principal concern of "The Silence of the Lambs" is the entrapment of Buffalo Bill before he can kill again. Yet the heart of the movie is the eerie and complex relationship that develops between Clarice and Hannibal during a series of prison interviews, conducted through inch-thick bulletproof glass.

Hannibal, as grandly played by Mr. Hopkins, is a most seductive psychopath, a fellow who listens to the "Goldberg Variations" and can sketch architecture from memory.


When Hannibal finally agrees to help Clarice, it's with the understanding that for every bit of information he gives her, she will tell him something about herself. Because Hannibal, by nature and by profession, is an expert in prying, the questions he asks, and the answers he receives, both frighten and soothe the young woman.



Miss Foster, in her first role since winning an Oscar for "The Accused," and Mr. Hopkins, an actor of cool and eloquent precision, give exciting substance to the roles written by Ted Tally, who adapted the screenplay from a novel by Thomas Harris. An earlier Thomas novel, "Red Dragon," in which the homicidal doctor also appears, was the basis of the 1986 film "Manhunter." (not Anthony Hopkins, and some say, a better portrayal of Lector.)


The buildup to the dread Hannibal's first scene is so effective that one flinches when he appears. All lifted perfectly from the novel.



The screenplay, which is very effective in detailing character, is occasionally hard pressed to feed the audience enough information so that it can follow the increasingly breathless manhunt without a roadmap. As always an extra hour would have fixed that, but that can never be.

The lucky ones already knew Thomas Harris' body of work, Black Sunday, a terrorism masterpiece with Bruce Dern, and Red Dragon. Having read Red Dragon and the sequel Silence of the Lambs, the film was perfect. So spectacular is Harris' work, that Manhunter was remade with the right title. with a reprise of Hopkins as Lecter. This time however, the film was marred by Jodie Foster's refusal to appear. But Gary Oldman's monsterous character more than makes up it. What a trilogy. In a more perfect world, the cast would have been consistent. Michael Mann's Manhunter, with William Peterson and for many a better Dr. Lector, is a sight to be seen. In an even more perfect world, it would have been a five year macro series like the Sopranos. That is the future of cinema. The seventy hour movie, in three D. Everyone knows that, even Vincent Canby, but he'll never tell.








The dialogue is tough and sharp, and literate.

Mr. Demme is a director of both humor and subtlety. The gruesome details are vivid without being exploited. Some would say excessive and unnecessary. He also handles the big set pieces with skill. The final confrontation between Clarice and the man she has been pursuing is a knockout -- a scene set in pitch dark, with Clarice being stalked by a killer who wears night-vision glasses.

Scott Glenn is brilliant as Clarice's F.B.I. mentor.

The good supporting cast includes Anthony Heald, as another doctor who might be as nutty as Hannibal, and Ted Levine a character actor in the very popular Michael Mann directed Crime story television series.

The film was a major commercial and critical success (the last successful release by Orion Pictures), although gay groups complained about its
stereotypical depiction of the trans-sexual killer in the finale. It was a five-time major Academy-Award winner, sweeping Best Picture, Best Actor
(Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Director (Jonathan Demme), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally) - in the Academy's history,
that remarkable feat has only been duplicated twice before [It Happened One Night (1934), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)]. And never by a crime thriller, despite the great popularity of the genre. Demme's
Best Director Oscar win made him the first (and only) film-maker to have ever won for a thriller. Foster's strong, yet restrained, vulnerable female lead role
in the much talked-about film was intensified by public knowledge of her real-life associations as a victim with assassin John Hinckley and her role as
child-prostitute Iris opposite Robert De Niro's portrayal of a crazed killer in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976).