Yvonne Tasker - The Silence of the Lambs

BFI Film Classics

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First published in 2002 by the British Film Institute

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Copyright Yvonne Tasker 2002, 2021

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Images from The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1990), Orion Pictures Corporation; Copycat (John Amiel, 1995), Monarchy Enterprises B.V./New Regency Films; The Cell (Tarsem Singh, 2000), Katira Media Production GmbH & Co. KG; Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986), De Laurentiis Entertainment Group; Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940), Selznick International Pictures; Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1989), Lightning Pictures; Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), Shamley Productions

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Contents

I .would like to thank Rob White who has been an excellent editor throughout this project, providing invaluable advice and support, and consistently asking the right questions. Over the years I have discussed The Silence of the Lambs with many friends, colleagues and students so it is difficult to single out particular individuals here. However, during the period of writing Tim Bergfelder, Martin Fradley, Mike Hammond, Marina Mackay and Sharon Tay have all suggested new directions though they may not know it! and Im grateful to them. I would also particularly like to thank Justine Ashby for enlightening discussions on the gothic, the womans picture and the possibilities of a feminist cinema.

Over the years since the books first publication, Ive discussed themes of gender, crime and horror at length with both Linda Mizejewski and Lindsay Steenberg; my thanks to them both. I would also like to thank Daniel Sheppard for his helpful suggestions as I worked on the revised edition of this book.

Finally, I want to thank my wife Rachel Hall to whom this study is dedicated.

Oscar night 1992: host Billy Crystal is wheeled on stage in a Hannibal Lecter-style hockey-mask. The Silence of the Lambs (1990) goes on to become one of only a few films to take the top five awards: Best Director for Jonathan Demme, Best Actress for Jodie Foster, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins, Best Picture for producers Ron Bozman, Edward Saxon and Kenneth Utt, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ted Tally. Reviewed as a thriller or as an example of psychological horror, and hyped as the scariest film of the year, Silence was only the second R-rated movie to achieve such a sweep, although R-rated films have regularly been awarded Best Picture since the US introduced a ratings system in the 1960s.

The Silence of the Lambs centres on the search for a serial killer, known only as Buffalo Bill, who abducts young women seemingly at random: all his victims are white and all are large. Bill imprisons these women in a dry well sunk in the heart of his labyrinthine basement, starving them for three days before shooting and skinning them. Their mutilated corpses are then dumped in rivers across the United States. Finally surfacing in random fashion, Buffalo Bills victims feed the investigations of an FBI team led by Jack Crawford that has, despite the appearance of five bodies, had little success in tracking the killer. The FBI find themselves literally clueless: the water eliminates trace evidence and no single factor seems to link all the victims to each other or to their killer. Meanwhile, in the privacy of his basement, Buffalo Bill is carefully and skilfully constructing a garment out of the flayed flesh of his victims.

Though Buffalo Bill has been at his work for some time, The Silence of the Lambs is tightly structured around the intensive investigation that is triggered by the abduction of Catherine Martin, the daughter of Republican Senator Ruth Martin. Lured into a van Bill gains her trust by wearing a cast on his arm in the fashion of serial killer Ted Bundy Catherine is introduced and then abducted about thirty minutes into the movie. From this moment on, both audience and investigators know that they are in a race against time. The search for Catherine drives the narrative forward, while the dialogue features repeated references to the passing of time.

The films premise would already have been familiar to readers of Thomas Harriss best-selling 1998 novel, and in rather more gruesome detail. The novel provides us with details of, for instance, the particular way that bodies decay in water, how they can be scorched in the trunk of a car after death, or the fiendishly difficult aspects of managing human skin, all details that the film sets to one side. Despite his meticulous research working with the FBI, examining the cases of actual serial killers and so on Harris is probably best known for creating the rather fantastical character of Hannibal The Cannibal Lecter. In turn, this unlikely role made the well-respected Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins into a fully-fledged film star. A former psychiatrist who killed and ate his victims, Lecter is the films evil genius, a seductive variety of mad scientist. More importantly in terms of the quest for the killer and for Catherine, Lecter knows the identity of Buffalo Bill.