Making Horror Respectable

This chapter assesses how Jonathan Demme's adaptation brought about a seismic change in the horror film genre of the 1990s; it performed a similar function for the crime narrative. The acclaim that the film enjoyed, both critically and commercially, was unprecedented. Particularly noteworthy was the recognition from the staid, conservative members of AMPASS, the industry body whose membership is responsible for bestowing the Academy Awards. It would be easy to say that these wins were exclusively due to the exemplary film-making on display in the film, but not quite accurate — such an impressive use of the medium as was evident would not alone have seduced the conservative Academy members, given the disreputable nature of the horror medium. One factor dictating this sea change in terms of Oscar recognition was the contribution of the actor Anthony Hopkins. Ultimately, what elevates The Silence of the Lambs above its cinematic predecessor is the balancing of the two principal (interlocking) plots: the pursuit and capture of the serial killer Buffalo Bill, and the growing uneasy relationship between the monk-like Hannibal Lecter and his novice ‘pupil’ Clarice Starling.

After the Silence

This chapter addresses the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001). Both the colour palette and the tone of the new film were different from its predecessor, with a greater emphasis on primary colours and atmospheric chiaroscuro effects, and the material's black humour more accentuated. In keeping with the director's expertise in the realm of the epic, Hannibal was placed within a much more geographically sprawling canvas, with a great deal of the film shot in a beautifully evoked Florence, the city in which Hannibal Lecter is masquerading as the expert in Renaissance art, ‘Dr Fell’. Ridley Scott's assumption of the directorial reins proved highly successful and the film enjoyed immense popularity, breaking several box office records as it wittily opened on Valentine's Day of 2001. If the talented Julianne Moore was able to do less with the character of Clarice Starling than her predecessor, this was perhaps due to the extra level of confidence the FBI agent has acquired by this stage of her life. Professional though the actress's work was throughout, neither she nor her director could produce the kind of touching verisimilitude that was Jodie Foster's stock-in-trade in the first film. The chapter then looks at the prequels: Brett Ratner's Red Dragon (2002) and Peter Webber's Hannibal Rising (2007).

Hannibal’s Precursors

This chapter discusses the other serial killers in the cinema before Hannibal Lecter. In 1959, the writer Robert Bloch was inspired by the gruesome case of the Wisconsin mass murderer Ed Gein, with his keepsakes of bones and human skin. He transmuted elements of the Gein case into the phenomenally successful Psycho (published 1959), reconfiguring the real-life Gein as the chubby, unprepossessing mother's boy Norman Bates, who dispatches a variety of victims in gruesome fashion. Subsequently, Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of the novel (1960) laid down the parameters for a variety of genres: the serial killer movie, the slasher film, and the modern big-budget horror film which utilises above-the-title stars rather than the journeyman actors who had populated such fare previously. But above all else, Hitchcock and his talented screenwriter Joseph Stefano created a template for the intelligent, richly developed, and charismatic fictional serial killer in their version of Norman Bates. Hitchcock's film was to influence a generation of film-makers and writers; among them Thomas Harris.

Jonathan Demme’s the Silence of the Lambs

This chapter focuses on Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991). The synthesis of elements that create the look and identity of a film come from a variety of talents: from the director's original conception, to the cinematographer's realisation of the same; to the production designer. In the case of The Silence of the Lambs, these three elements are in perfect harmony, producing a visual signature for the film which is highly distinctive and very specific to Demme's vision. The chapter then details the first meeting and the subsequent interviews between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling. The initial meeting between Clarice and the murderous psychiatrist Lecter is one of the great set pieces of modern cinema. While clearly adhering to the imperatives of popular cinema, the sequence is shot and acted with a rigour worthy of the ‘chamber cinema’ of the Swedish master Ingmar Bergman in his late 1960s films — and this is not the only occasion in which the more rarefied agendas of art cinema are evoked by Demme and his collaborators. Another popular sequence is a perfect concatenation of all three elements of acting, writing, and direction, in which Lecter makes his devastating (and cruel) character analysis of Clarice. The chapter also explores the horror film credentials and accoutrements of the film.