Orion Pictures released The Silence of the Lambs on Valentine’s Day 1991. Somebody in that office had a sense of humor.
Thirty-five years later, Jonathan Demme‘s thriller still works on every rewatch, even when you know what’s waiting at the end. If you want something for Halloween weekend that scares you without a hockey mask, start here.
The story comes from Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel, his follow-up to Red Dragon, which had already been filmed as Manhunter in 1986 with Brian Cox as Lecter. That earlier movie barely made a dent at the box office. This one changed the genre.
Jodie Foster plays Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee pulled off the obstacle course at Quantico and sent to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter in his Baltimore cell. The Bureau is chasing a killer the newspapers call Buffalo Bill, and Lecter might know who he is. He’ll help. He just wants something from Clarice in return, one memory at a time.
Those conversations are the movie. Ted Tally’s screenplay treats every one of them like a trade. Lecter offers a clue wrapped in a riddle. Starling has to give up a piece of her childhood to get the next one. By the third session, he knows her better than anyone at the Bureau, and you can see what that costs her.
Anthony Hopkins is on screen for only a small part of the film, and he won Best Actor anyway. He stands perfectly still in the center of his glass cell, as if he’s been waiting there for years, and he never hurries a line. He’s courteous, curious, funny and absolutely frightening, sometimes all in one sentence. The first time we see him, he’s simply standing there, and the scene still raises the hair on your arms.
Foster has the tougher part, and she carries the picture. Starling is young, smart and surrounded by men who either want something from her or want her gone. In a West Virginia funeral home, a room full of local deputies stares her down until she quietly takes charge and sends them out. No speech, no big moment. You just watch her decide.
Demme and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto put the camera right in the actors’ faces, with them looking nearly into the lens. When Lecter studies Clarice, he’s studying you. When the men around her size her up, you feel it too. That one choice does more damage than any jump scare in the film.
Howard Shore’s score keeps it low and mournful instead of shrieking, which fits a movie more interested in grief and fear than in gore. There’s very little blood on screen for a film with this reputation. Most of the horror happens in your head.
The supporting cast is excellent from top to bottom. Scott Glenn plays Jack Crawford, the agent who sends Starling into that asylum knowing exactly why he chose her. Anthony Heald is perfectly smug as Dr. Chilton, a small, vain man who has no idea how far out of his depth he is. Kasi Lemmons gives Starling a real friend as fellow trainee Ardelia Mapp. Brooke Smith, as the kidnapped Catherine Martin, makes you root for her from the bottom of a pit.
Ted Levine is truly creepy as Buffalo Bill. That character has aged worse than the rest of the movie, and the way the film handles him plays differently today than it did in 1991. It’s worth knowing going in.
Then there’s the last half hour. Lecter’s escape in Memphis is one of the most talked-about sequences of the decade, and the finale cross-cuts two scenes so cleanly that almost everyone falls for it the first time. The closing phone call sends you out grinning when you probably shouldn’t be.
The film cost about $19 million and made more than $270 million worldwide. At the Oscars, it won all five top awards: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Adapted Screenplay. Only It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had done that before, and no film has done it since. It’s also rare for any movie released in February to still be remembered by awards night, let alone sweep it.
Thirty years of TV crime procedurals owe it something, and so does every film that has put a genius villain behind glass. None of them topped the original, because none of them had Foster and Hopkins a few inches apart, staring each other down.
Rated R, 1 hour and 58 minutes. Lights down. Maybe skip the fava beans.
