The Silence of the Lambs (film)

The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American psychological horror thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Ted Tally, adapted from Thomas Harris's 1988 novel. It stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee who is hunting a serial killer named "Buffalo Bill" (Ted Levine), who skins his female victims. To catch him, she seeks the advice of the imprisoned Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The film also features performances from Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, and Kasi Lemmons.

The Silence of the Lambs was released on February 14, 1991, and grossed $272.7 million worldwide on a $19 million budget, becoming the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1991 worldwide. It premiered at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Bear, while Demme received the Silver Bear for Best Director. It became the third and most recent film (the other two being 1934's It Happened One Night and 1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) to win Academy Awards in the five major categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was the first (and to date only) horror film to win Best Picture.

The Silence of the Lambs is regularly cited by critics, film directors, and audiences as one of the greatest and most influential films. In 2018, Empire ranked it 48th on their list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. The American Film Institute ranked it the sixty-fifth greatest film in American cinema, as well as the fifth-greatest and most influential thriller film, while Starling and Lecter were ranked among the greatest film heroines and villains. The film is considered "culturally, historically, or aesthetically" significant by the U.S. Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2011. A sequel, Hannibal, was released in 2001, followed by two prequel films, Red Dragon (2002) and Hannibal Rising (2007).

Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee at the Quantico Academy, is recruited by Behavioral Science Unit chief Jack Crawford to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant yet cannibalistic serial killer imprisoned at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Under the guise of soliciting his participation in a psychological survey, Crawford secretly aims to leverage Lecter's insights to apprehend "Buffalo Bill", a psychopath who murders young women and removes their skin.

At the hospital, Dr. Frederick Chilton, the facility's manipulative director, makes unwelcome advances toward Starling before escorting her to Lecter's cell. Initially courteous, Lecter grows dismissive upon deducing Crawford's ulterior motive. As Starling departs, inmate Miggs flings semen at her, provoking Lecter's disgust. He summons her back and offers a clue in the form of an anagram that leads her to a storage unit containing a severed head in a jar. Later, Miggs is found dead in his cell, having swallowed his own tongue—an act implicitly orchestrated by Lecter as retribution for his assault on Starling. Lecter agrees to assist the investigation in exchange for a transfer away from Chilton. Meanwhile, another victim is discovered with a death's-head moth lodged in her throat—the same species later found inside the severed head.

When Buffalo Bill abducts Catherine Martin, daughter of U.S. Senator Ruth Martin, Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Lecter a fraudulent deal: a prison transfer in return for actionable intelligence. Lecter instead demands a quid pro quo, extracting personal details from Starling. She reveals that her father, a police officer, was murdered when she was ten, leaving her orphaned. In exchange, Lecter reveals that Buffalo Bill is not a genuine transsexual but believes he is, possibly having been rejected from gender-reassignment clinics. Unbeknownst to Starling, Chilton records the conversation and later exposes her deceit, offering Lecter a new arrangement: relocation to Tennessee in exchange for information. Lecter complies and is flown to Memphis, where he provides Senator Martin with accurate details about Buffalo Bill's appearance but falsely identifies him as "Louis Friend", toying with her desperation.

Starling deciphers "Louis Friend" as an anagram for "iron sulfide" (fool's gold) and confronts Lecter in his Tennessee cell. Lecter demands deeper revelations, offering a final cryptic clue—"we covet what we see every day"—before Starling, compelled by his probing, recounts a traumatic childhood incident: after her father's death, she lived on a relative's Montana farm, where she failed to save spring lambs from slaughter, their screams haunting her nightmares. Lecter intuits that saving Catherine might silence this trauma, and, satisfied by Starling's candor, he returns the Buffalo Bill case files. That night, Lecter orchestrates a gruesome escape by using a smuggled pen to unlock his restraints and murder his two guards. He later peels the face off one of the guards and wears it as a disguise, fooling paramedics into wheeling him out of the building.

Analyzing Lecter's annotations, Starling deduces that Buffalo Bill knew his first victim, Frederika Bimmel, a tailor from Ohio, and independently follows the lead. Visiting Bimmel's home, Starling finds unfinished dresses and patterns matching patches of skin removed from the victims, realizing that Bill seeks to construct a "suit" from human flesh. Crawford cross-references Lecter's notes with medical records, identifying Jame Gumb—a rejected transsexual applicant deemed too violent—as the prime suspect. While Crawford's team raids Gumb's vacant Illinois residence, Starling interviews Bimmel's acquaintances, arriving at a house where Gumb poses as "Jack Gordon". His facade crumbles when Starling spots a death's-head moth.

Pursuing Gumb into his basement, Starling discovers Catherine trapped in a dry well. Gumb stalks her using night-vision goggles but betrays his position by cocking his revolver. Starling fires blindly, killing him. Catherine is rescued, and Starling graduates from the FBI Academy.

During her celebration, Lecter calls from Bimini, Bahamas, asking Starling if "the lambs have stopped screaming." He assures her he has no intention of pursuing her, requesting that she return the favor—a vow she declines. He announces he's "having an old friend for dinner" before trailing Chilton into a crowd, implying his next victim.

In the years following its release, The Silence of the Lambs was subject to much film criticism regarding its themes of human sexuality and sexual politics. Throughout the film, Clarice Starling's gender is emphasized as a distinguishing feature, as she is a minority amongst her numerous male peers, though film scholar Barry Forshaw notes that "any feminist agenda is never bluntly formulated verbally".

Some gay male critics and feminists felt that the film's portrayal of Buffalo Bill negatively associated the LGBT community with deviance, psychopathy, and violence. Despite this, Bill's sexual orientation is never explicitly stated in the film, and Hannibal Lecter expressly states Bill is "not really transsexual". Director Jonathan Demme argued that this criticism was misguided, telling The New York Times that "I got all this unfounded abuse... [Buffalo Bill] wasn't a gay character. He was a tormented man who hated himself and wished he was a woman because that would have made him as far away from himself as he possibly could be." Demme added that he "came to realize that there is a tremendous absence of positive gay characters in movies".

In a 1992 interview with Playboy magazine, the feminist and women's rights advocate Betty Friedan stated: "I thought it was absolutely outrageous that The Silence of the Lambs won four [sic] Oscars. [...] I'm not saying that the movie shouldn't have been shown. I'm not denying the movie was an artistic triumph, but it was about the evisceration, the skinning alive of women. That is what I find offensive. Not the Playboy centerfold."

In following years the film (and its claims that Bill is "not really transsexual") has been criticized for transphobia by transfeminists, who claimed that it is "one of the most significant and impactful examples of pop culture transmisogyny" and it "encourages disbelief of trans people's self-identification".

The movie is based on the 1988 novel by Thomas Harris. It was the second film to feature the character Hannibal Lecter; the first, Manhunter (1986), directed by Michael Mann, was based on the first novel in the Lecter series, Red Dragon (1981). Prior to the release of the Silence of the Lambs novel, Orion Pictures partnered with Gene Hackman to adapt it for film. With Hackman set to direct and possibly star in as FBI agent Jack Crawford, negotiations were made to split the $500,000 cost of rights between Hackman and the studio. The producers also had to acquire the rights to the Lecter character, which were owned by Manhunter producer Dino De Laurentiis. Owing to the financial failure of Manhunter, De Laurentiis lent the rights to Orion for free.

In November 1987, Ted Tally was brought on to write the adaptation; Tally had crossed paths with Harris many times, with his interest in adapting The Silence of the Lambs originating from receiving an advance copy of the book from Harris. When Tally was about halfway through with the first draft, Hackman withdrew from the project and financing fell through. However, Orion co-founder Mike Medavoy encouraged Tally to keep writing as the studio took care of financing and searched for a replacement director. Orion sought Jonathan Demme to direct. With the screenplay not yet completed, Demme signed on after reading the novel. From there, the project developed quickly; Tally said: "[Demme] read my first draft not long after it was finished, and we met. Then I was just startled by the speed of things. We met in May 1989 and were shooting in November. I don't remember any big revisions."