The Silence Of The Lambs (Widescreen Special Edition)
by Jonathan Demme
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Actor: Anthony Hopkins, Brooke Smith, Jodie Foster, Scott Glenn, Ted LevineDirector: Jonathan Demme
Producer: Edward Saxon
Producer: Gary Goetzman
Producer: Grace Blake
Producer: Kenneth Utt
Producer: Ronald M. Bozman
Writer: Ted Tally
Writer: Thomas Harris
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 118 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-08-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of The Silence Of The Lambs (Widescreen Special Edition)
DVD Review: The Best Thriller-to-Movie Translation Ever
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is based on the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. A serial killer dubbed by the media Buffalo Bill has already kidnapped and murdered five women. Their bodies have been found partially skinned. Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), head of the FBI's serial killer unit, chooses bright, dedicated young Academy trainee Clarice Starling to interview an incarcerated sociopath, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. In addition to being mad as a hatter, Lecter is a brilliant psychologist; Crawford believes Lecter will respond to Clarice's decency, her beauty, her femaleness, and thus be lured into providing a psychological profile of Buffalo Bill that might help capture him. When Bill kidnaps his next victim, a Senator's daughter, Clarice dedicates herself to finding Bill before he can kill the girl.
Orion Pictures tapped Jonathan Demme to direct The Silence of the Lambs, seemingly a strange choice to helm a project dealing with such grim, intense material. Demme's previous movies were lightweight comedies like Something Wild and Married to the Mob. At first Demme wanted Michelle Pfeiffer to play Clarice Starling. He'd just directed her in Married to the Mob. Pfeiffer turned down the role; after reading the script she thought it was too violent. Meanwhile Jodie Foster had been campaigning for the part. Demme was familiar with Foster, of course, but wasn't sure he could see her as Clarice Starling. In the DVD's excellent hour-long "Making Of" featurette, screenwriter Ted Tally relates how Demme told him about meeting Jodie Foster, and what finally convinced him she was right for the role: "I watched her coming down the hall towards me. This sturdy little figure, striding along, with this determined look on her face. And I just thought, 'That's her. That's Clarice Starling.'"
To play Hannibal Lecter, Orion wanted Robert Duvall. Demme felt casting an actor of Duvall's familiarity would have worked against the role, that audiences would always see Robert Duvall up there on-screen instead of Hannibal Lecter. Instead Demme wanted the highly accomplished and respected but comparatively unknown English actor Anthony Hopkins. When Demme flew to London to meet with Hopkins, the actor asked him, "Why cast me?" Demme said he'd seen Hopkins portrayal of Dr. Treves in The Elephant Man. Hopkins said, "But Treves is a very good man," to which Demme replied, "Well, that's what I want for Lecter. That's he's a compassionate man, he's a humanitarian, he's a good man locked inside this insane mind."
In the translation from novel to movie, certain changes had to be made, one being that the book's multiple viewpoint narrative was largely jettisoned. Demme made an early choice to show the movie, where possible, from Clarice Starling's viewpoint, that in every scene in which the character was present there would be at least one point-of-view shot where we looked through Clarice's eyes, for maximum viewer identification with the character.
Theater audiences responded strongly and immediately to this film. It was the #1 movie in America for five weeks after its release, and stayed in the Top 10 just forever. Why was that? It wasn't because it was a big budget spectacular. Silence of the Lambs was made for 20 million dollars; a modest bankroll even in 1991 money. Certainly we must give credit to the great script, the great direction, to Ted Levine's eerie portrayal of Buffalo Bill. However, I believe that at heart there were two main reasons for the movie's popularity.
(1) The performances of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins as Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter. As Lecter gets to know Clarice, he obviously finds her stimulating and attractive. The most fascinating scenes, really the heart of the movie, are those where these two great actors simply talk to each other. Lecter taunts and bedevils Clarice - he is, after all, a sadist who's been locked behind glass, unable to inflict pain, for years - while alternately cajoling and praising her toward unlocking the mystery of Buffalo Bill, like Socrates with a prize pupil. Part of the reason Lecter needles Clarice, I think, is to see if she can take it. And she can. She listens, perseveres, responds intelligently, maintains her dignity in the face of a psychological rape that would send a lesser personality fleeing or screaming, and eventually gets everything she wants out of Lecter. He respects that. And so these two very different people attempt to understand each other. Clarice struggles to understand what it's like to be a monster. Lecter attempts to understand what makes a hero.
(2) The female main character. Women are still, in our society, perceived as vulnerable, or at least more generally vulnerable than men. The film constantly underlines the fact that Clarice is a woman operating in a man's world, doing a traditionally male job. Whenever a movie or TV show tries to portray a female hero, usually she's an unstoppable assassin or somesuch. But Clarice Starling IS vulnerable, and decent, and caring. We travel along with this believable, admirable woman as she progresses on what is very much a traditional hero's journey. We watch her do battle with monsters, both Lecter and Buffalo Bill. We see her face her own fears, both physical and psychological, and overcome them. Eventually this leads her down into a dungeon, there to face a dragon in its lair, to win or die, all to save a princess.
In 1991, Jody Foster won the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance as Clarice Starling; Anthony Hopkins was Best Actor as Dr. Hannibal Lecter; Jonathan Demme was Best Director; Ted Tally took Best Screenplay Based On Material Previously Produced or Published. All richly deserved. As is pointed out by film critic Amy Taubin, it's difficult to characterize The Silence of the Lambs. It's a weird and amazingly successful hybrid: a police procedural, a psychological drama, a Gothic horror movie, a slasher film with no slashing. This is arguably the best thriller-to-movie translation ever made. Hell, it's in the top tier of NOVELS to movie, period.
Description of The Silence Of The Lambs (Widescreen Special Edition)
Based on Thomas Harris's novel, this terrifying film by Jonathan Demme really only contains a couple of genuinely shocking moments (one involving an autopsy, the other a prison break). The rest of the film is a splatter-free visual and psychological descent into the hell of madness, redeemed astonishingly by an unlikely connection between a monster and a haunted young woman. Anthony Hopkins is extraordinary as the cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, virtually entombed in a subterranean prison for the criminally insane. At the behest of the FBI, agent-in-training Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) approaches Lecter, requesting his insights into the identity and methods of a serial killer named Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). In exchange, Lecter demands the right to penetrate Starling's most painful memories, creating a bizarre but palpable intimacy that liberates them both under separate but equally horrific circumstances. Demme, a filmmaker with a uniquely populist vision (Melvin and Howard, Something Wild), also spent his early years making pulp for Roger Corman (Caged Heat), and he hasn't forgotten the significance of tone, atmosphere, and the unsettling nature of a crudely effective close-up. Much of the film, in fact, consists of actors staring straight into the camera (usually from Clarice's point of view), making every bridge between one set of eyes to another seem terribly dangerous. --Tom KeoghBestsellers in DVD
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