image via FangoriaTeam Experience is revisiting 1991's Best Picture, Silence of the Lambs for its 25th anniversary.
In Pt 1 We met Clarice and Hannibal and heard about the horrifying Buffalo Bill case.
In Pt 2 The FBI's investigation picked up steam with the discovery of another victim and The Death's Head Moth. Finally, we met Buffalo Bill and his latest victim Catherine, now "the girl in the pit." When we left her she was a disembodied voice shouting for help. Why won't you answer me please?
Answers are coming but not without a price.
Pt 3 by Nathaniel R
00:49:50 A smartly judged sharp cut takes us from the dark abyss of Bill's pit to the brightly lit FBI training facility. It's like blinking from too much sun when you leave a movie theater in the middle of the day. Though Silence of the Lambs deals with gruesomely complex psychology its binaries of good and evil are the lifeline for mass appeal I think. (Craig McKay was nominated for Best Film Editing, losing to JFK's collage and barrage of characters and information)
The students. Demme never gets any credit for his multi-ethnic casting but he was doing it long before people were hating on Hollywood for *not* doing it.
00:51:34 A news broadcast about Buffalo Bill at the training center attracts a large group of students. Turns out the Girl in the Pit is actually a US Senator's daughter so there's yet more pressure to get this case solved. Ardelia whispers to Clarice that it's so smart what the Senator is doing, repeating Catherine's name so often; get her would be killer to see her as human and maybe he'll show mercy.
00:51:35 Another jarring cut and we're back at the asylum. Chilton has had it with Clarice's secrecy. Jodie Foster's performance is so sharp in this movie. You can see our heroine getting bolder and more confident each time she steps out; her body language is more confrontational, too. [More after the jump...]
This offer is non-negotiable and final. Catherine Martin dies. You get nothing."
00:52:33 She makes Lecter the Plum Island offer. A cel with a view and once a year, a trip to the beach. Under heavy surveillance of course.
00:54:05 The famous "Quid Pro Quo" sequence. Hannibal has his own offer. He wants inside Clarice's head. There's soooo much to unpack here. Too much, really. So can we take a brief pause and discuss the visual strategies? Though super tight closeups are increasingly the norm in cinema (even when they have no reason to exist emotionally in a given scene) back in 1991 I don't remember them being this common. There was something super confrontational about this choice by Demme and his cinematographer Tak Fukimoto. Again and again we're only looking at eyes, nose and mouth.
Take this shot of Clarice, like, many others in the movie as she listens to the news broadcast
And then this shot during Quid Pro Quo when Lecter listens to Clarice's worst memory.
You can't look away. That shot above also highlights a really fascinating acting choice, from Anthony Hopkins. This monster, who is usually staring unblinking at Clarice, actually turns away from her repeatedly during her most painful childhood memories. He's not avoiding her pain but savoring it, his eyes closing slowly, pleasurably, with each new frank disclosure. But why is he hiding this from her? Would it give her too much power?
Kieran and Angelica both expressed reservations about this performance. I know some find Hopkins hammy and, yes, he goes large. But it's exquisitely precise in its largeness if you will. At least this time. Hopkins is one of those actors who can't help himself and often, it goes the other way and doesn't turn out this well. Because his star turn has become so iconic in pop culture, it reads more cute familiar and hammy than it would otherwise. Trust that it was terrifying back in 1991! I avoided seeing the movie for a long time I was so scared of it until finally after the third nightmare I had about it, I gave in and saw it. And the nightmares promptly stopped. True Story.
Quid pro quo, Doctor!"
00:56:49 [Back to visual strategies] And then. BOOM. those two mesmerizing faces are combined, but a little roomier with the camera this time, for what is possibly the movie's signature image. How did Fujimoto miss an Oscar nomination?
Starling and Lecter discuss Bill's "pathology" and the word is placed uncomfortably close to the word "transexual" in this context... Lecter adding "only a thousand times more savage" (But what's 1000 x 0. It's still 0, you transphobe monster!) Angelica hinted at this topic in her write up in chapter 2 but I think Silence of the Lambs relationship to its own queerness is one of the most fascinating fucked up things about it and one of the things that made it feel so singular. People protested it at the time for being anti-gay but it is possible (and not really difficult either) to read Clarice as queer which gives it another feeling altogether.
Check out that amazing composition... all that inky dark space when the frame is usually full
It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it's told.
00:57:51 Bill must've missed that new broadcast teaching him Catherine's name because he keeps calling her "it".
00:58:34 Brooke Smith is GREAT in this movie. I will accept no arguments to the contrary. People always cite Drew Barrymore's work in Scream as the best "frightened" performance in the movies but Smith is way up there. She sells this thankfully unimaginable nightmare so authentically.
[Pet Peeve] SAG wasn't giving out prizes back then but you should know that had they awarded this one the Ensemble prize she would not have been among the winners (due to their stupid rules) because she was a complete unknown. She shares her title card with Diane Baker and Kasi Lemmons which means Jodie is the only female in the Ensemble according to SAG.[/Peeve]
00:59:26 One of the most disturbing images -- i am not screencapping it! -- is when Bill proceeds to mock and imitate Catherine's screaming while pulling his shirt out the way little kids do when they're indicating 'boobies'.
Remember when Billy Crystal did this on Oscar night?
01:00:46 Dr Chilton throws a wrench in the FBI plans and tells Hannibal there's no deal. Anthony Heald is trying to outham Anthony Hopkins. Too much, man. Pull back! Pull back! and they're off to meet the Senator herself to work out a new deal.
01:04:06 Hannibal feigns politeness with the Senator and then sticks the knife in, figuratively, with a breastfeeding detour "Toughened your nipples didn't it?" Things sour from there and Lecter feeds everyone lies.
01:05:26 Starling bluffs her way in to the Courthouse where Hannibal is now being held.
01:06:04 Great mini moment with a cop in the elevator that a lesser film might have cut. The cop asks the young FBI agent if it's true, if Lecter is like 'a vampire or something?' Her response
They don't have a name for what he is."
Jodie's line reading is amazing. It's resigned and matter of fact but it has this duality to it. She's half there and half in the next scene, knowing she's about to see Lecter again. And this question... surely she's already tried to Name it too many times to herself.
01:07:15 Lecter again. He is sassy. He is pissed.
People will say we're in love."
He is quoting showtunes.
01:08:13 Clarice is pacing, and desperate. Time is running out for Catherine.
You were telling me the truth back in Baltimore, Doctor. Please continue!"
He will... but there's more Quid Pro Quo when we return
Nathaniel Rogers, the creator and owner of The Film Experience. He is the film columnist for Towleroad, an Oscar pundit, and his writing has appeared in both online publications (Vanity Fair, Slate, Tribeca Film) and print magazines (Esquire and Winq). Nathaniel has served on international festival juries and appeared as an on-air pundit for CNNi. [Follow Nathaniel on Twitter | Contact Nathaniel | All Nathaniel's articles]