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:INFO.half
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Hopkins is on screen for about a quarter of an hour, and Demme shoots half the film straight down the lens.

:STATS
[icon:CLOCK] Runtime | 118 minutes
[icon:STAR] Director | Jonathan Demme
[icon:CHART] Budget | $19 million
[icon:TRENDING_UP] Box office | $273 million worldwide
[icon:FIRE] Cinematography | Tak Fujimoto

:INFO
Looking Directly At The Audience
Demme's decision was to abandon the convention that actors look slightly off camera during conversation. Clarice Starling is addressed directly into the lens by nearly every man in the film, so the audience occupies the position of the person leaning in on her: the boss, the entomologist, the sheriff's deputies, the psychiatrist behind the glass. The result is a thriller that reproduces the experience of being appraised. Jodie Foster plays Starling as visibly working harder than everyone else in the room, with her accent and her height and her rank all against her, and Anthony Hopkins builds Lecter out of stillness and diction in about sixteen minutes of screen time, which won him Best Actor.

:JOURNEY
Watching The Silence of the Lambs
2 Summoned
4 Approached
4 Traded
4 Discovered
5 Escaped
5 Hunted

:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Hannibal Lecter · The Silence of the Lambs · 1991]
A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

:CHECKLIST
What to watch for
[ ] Direct to lens address whenever Starling is being sized up
[ ] Height and framing used to isolate her in every room of men
[ ] Lecter's cell scenes lit so the glass shows both faces at once
[ ] The intercut misdirection between the SWAT raid and the doorbell
[ ] Night vision goggles putting the audience with the killer rather than the agent

:NOTE.half
It is one of three films to win all five major Academy Awards, and the only horror film ever to win Best Picture, taking the awards more than a year after its February release.

:NOTE.half
Gay rights groups picketed the Oscars over Buffalo Bill. Demme responded partly by making Philadelphia two years later, and the argument about the character has never quite closed.

:LINK
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102926/
The Silence of the Lambs on IMDb: full cast and crew