![]() ![]() ![]() At first, we appear to be looking at a woman running for her life through the woods. Take, for example, the opening sequence, where we meet Starling for the first time. A sense of horror and black malaise remains present throughout his film, which, like Lecter himself, is fond of playing subtle little games with its viewers. Where Michael Mann’s Manhunter was a clean police procedural drama which disturbed through its sheer spooky sterility, director Jonathan Demme takes a grubbier, perhaps even more dreamlike approach to the same genre. Starling’s boss Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) has a hunch that Lecter’s fractured mind might be able to cast some insight into Buffalo Bill’s way of thinking in fact, Lecter has more than a passing connection to the rampaging serial killer, something he only gradually reveals to the wide-eyed Clarice Starling. As a wider search is undertaken, trainee FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is assigned to interview Doctor Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a former psychiatrist imprisoned for his equally nasty habit of devouring his own patients. ![]() ![]() There’s a murderer at large in America’s Midwest, dubbed Buffalo Bill because of his nasty habit of cutting the skin from his female victims. Silence Of The Lambs’ plot is one seen in a legion serial killer thrillers since. Chunks of its script and the composition of entire scenes may be familiar to moviegoers of a certain age, yet Jonathan Demme’s film remains as watchable as it ever was. It’s a testament to The Silence Of The Lambs’ storytelling, therefore, that its popularity has done little to diminish its strength. That Chianti quote above became one of several lines from the film quoted constantly throughout the rest of the 1990s. Where Manhunter gradually acquired a cult following and slowly seeped into movie fans’ subconscious, Silence Of The Lambs became a popular phenomenon, with references and parodies appearing on our televisions within months of release. Where Manhunter failed financially (largely due to poor marketing and distribution), Silence Of The Lambs soared at the box office. Unlike Manhunter – Michael Mann’s stunning 1986 adaptation of Thomas Harris’ previous novel, Red Dragon – Silence Of The Lambs was released to immediate acclaim. If anything, The Silence Of The Lambs became a victim of its own success in the 1990s. ![]()
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