The Silence Of The Lambs Is Anything But Silent Added: 10/20/2007

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The Silence Of The Lambs is a masterpiece of horror and suspense that was made in 1991 and is actually a sequel to the 1986 failed movie Manhunter. In Manhunter we are introduced to Dr. Hannibal Leckter who is a psychotic murderer and a cannibal as well. In The Silence Of The Lambs we are re-introduced to the good doctor but this time he spells his last name Lecter and this time he is definitely much more effective. Anthony Hopkins plays Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Lambs and much of what you see in the movie that is identified as famous traits of Hannibal Lecter were created by Hopkins. The rapid sucking noises he makes when he describes eating the flesh of other people, the line “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti,” and the fact that it always looks like Lecter knows exactly what is going on at all times were all things added to the role by Hopkins. For her part Jodi Foster brought a strength and determination to the role that actually came from lobbying to get the role in the first place. Foster was not director Jonathan Demme’s first choice but she lobbied so hard that when Demme finally met her he could not deny her passion for the role and cast her. Ted Levine, who played the psychotic mass murderer Buffalo Bill, tried out his role in known transvestite bars to find out how a real transvestite would act before getting to the set of The Silence Of The Lambs. All in all this little movie inspired by a real life relationship between mass murder Ted Bundy and a university professor who was using Bundy’s experiences as a mass murderer to solve another series of murders went on to become an enormous box office smash and also accomplished something that only two other movies had ever done before. The Silence Of The Lambs won an Oscar for best male actor in a lead, best female actor in a lead, best director, best picture, and best writer. Not bad Clarice.

The Silence Of The Lambs is the second chapter in the story of Hannibal Lecter but it is the most popular and to date the most successful. Anthony Hopkins did appear in a follow up movie to The Silence Of The Lambs and then again in a second follow up called Red Dragon, but nothing done after Silence Of The Lambs ever reached the heights of the first Anthony Hopkins performance. Watching Hopkins play the role of Hannibal Lecter is a delight and even though the movie can be very gruesome there is something about the way they portray the brutality that makes it almost easy to watch. That is probably where the follow up movie, Hannibal, went wrong. Hannibal was entirely too gruesome to carry a story while with Silence Of The Lambs the gruesome was sometimes implied, sometimes shown, but never over powering. What was over powering were the performances of actors like Foster and Hopkins. So strong were there performances that in the scene where Foster’s character Clarice Starling told Lecter the whole story about her childhood and why she ran away from home that the flashback called for in the script was abandoned because Demme felt it would interfere with the scene.

The Silence Of The Lambs is not only regularly referred to as one of the scariest movies of all time but it is also referred to as one of the best movies of all time. The cast chemistry just seemed to be magical and each performance was perfect in its own way. Originally Gene Hackman had purchased the rights to making The Silence Of The Lambs and he was going to appear in it as the head FBI agent and Clarice Starling’s boss. But Hackman realized that the film was too violent for him and he turned it over to Demme. That is quite a way for a history making Oscar winning movie to begin.

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