The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is one of only three films to win all five major Oscars, and the only horror film ever to do it. FBI trainee Clarice Starling is sent to interview Hannibal Lecter, an imprisoned psychiatrist and serial killer, in order to catch a different killer who is still at large. Anthony Hopkins is on screen for sixteen minutes in total. He won an Oscar with those sixteen minutes and created one of the most recognisable villains in cinema. The film is not really about Lecter, it is about Clarice. Jonathan Demme shoots almost the entire thing from her point of view and uses one specific device: characters look directly into the lens. The effect is that every man who looks at Clarice is also looking at you. That is where the tension actually comes from. The scenes between Foster and Hopkins are separated by glass and contain almost no movement. One note: the way Buffalo Bill is constructed around gender identity is seriously criticised now, and that criticism is well founded. Good for: thrillers, serial killer films, and film history. Less good for: there are murder scenes and an abduction narrative, and some of it is still hard to sit through.