Tagline: May thesilence be broken!
The Silence of the Lambs movie storyline. FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) works hard to advance her career, while trying to hide/put behind her West Virginia roots, of which if some knew, would automatically classify her as being backward or white trash.
After graduation, she aspires to work in the agency’s Behavioral Science Unit under the leadership of Jack Crawford. While she is still a trainee, Crawford asks her to question Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a psychiatrist imprisoned, thus far, for eight years in maximum security isolation for being a serial killer who cannibalized his victims.
Clarice is able to figure out the assignment is to pick Lecter’s brains to help them solve another serial murder case, that of someone coined by the media as Buffalo Bill, who has so far killed five victims, all located in the eastern US, all young women who are slightly overweight (especially around the hips), all who were drowned in natural bodies of water, and all who were stripped of large swaths of skin.
She also figures that Crawford chose her, as a woman, to be able to trigger some emotional response from Lecter. After speaking to Lecter for the first time, she realizes that everything with him will be a psychological game, with her often having to read between the very cryptic lines he provides. She has to decide how much she will play along, as his request in return for talking to him is to expose herself emotionally to him.
The case takes a more dire turn when a sixth victim is discovered, this one from who they are able to retrieve a key piece of evidence, if Lecter is being forthright as to its meaning. A potential seventh victim is high profile Catherine Martin, the daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, which places greater scrutiny on the case as they search for a hopefully still alive Catherine. Who may factor into what happens is Dr. Frederick Chilton, the warden at the prison, an opportunist who sees the higher profile with Catherine, meaning a higher profile for himself if he can insert himself successfully into the proceedings.
Ted Tally’s screenplay was based on Thomas Harris’ 1988 best-selling novel of the same name (an earlier thriller, Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), was based on another Harris novel – titled Red Dragon). A genuinely-frightening, violent, psychological thriller about the intimate exchanges between a deranged, hypnotic serial killer and a raw, vulnerable FBI trainee.
The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American horror-thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and Scott Glenn. Adapted by Ted Tally from the 1988 novel of the same name by Thomas Harris, his second to feature the character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter; a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer, the film was the second adaptation of a Harris novel featuring Lecter, preceded by the Michael Mann-directed Manhunter in 1986. In the film, Clarice Starling, a young U.S. FBI trainee, seeks the advice of the imprisoned Dr. Lecter to apprehend another serial killer, known only as “Buffalo Bill”.
The Silence of the Lambs was released on February 14, 1991, and grossed $272.7 million worldwide against its $19 million budget. It was only the third film, the other two being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, to win Academy Awards in all the top five categories: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Adapted Screenplay.
It is also the first (and so far only) Best Picture winner widely considered to be a horror film, and only the third such film to be nominated in the category, after The Exorcist in 1973 and Jaws in 1975. The film is considered “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant by the U.S. Library of Congress and was selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry in 2011.[5] A sequel titled Hannibal was released in 2001 with Hopkins reprising his role, followed by two prequels: Red Dragon (2002) and Hannibal Rising (2007).
Principal photography for The Silence of the Lambs began on November 15, 1989 and concluded on March 1, 1990. Filming primarily took place in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with some scenes shot in nearby northern West Virginia. The home of Buffalo Bill used for exterior scenes was in Layton, Pennsylvania. The exterior of the Western Center near Canonsburg, Pennsylvania served as the setting for Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. In what was a rare act of cooperation at the time, the FBI allowed scenes to be filmed at the FBI Academy in Quantico; some FBI staff members even acted in bit parts.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Lawrence A. Bonney, Kasi Lemmons, Anthony Heald, Frankie Faison, Maria Skorobogatov, Stuart Rudin, Leib Lensky, Jeffrie Lane
Screenplay by: Ted Tally
Production Design by: Kristi Zea
Cinematography by: Tak Fujimoto
Film Editing by: Craig McKay
Costume Design by: Colleen Atwood
Set Decoration by: Karen O’Hara
Art Direction by: Tim Galvin
Music by: Howard Shore
Distributed by: Orion Pictures
Release Date: February 14, 1991
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