A director who knows his genres, Jonathan Demme has never been able to resist turning them inside out. Starting in the film industry as a publicist, Demme was soon hired by Roger Corman as a scriptwriter and then as a director. Corman's rules for filmmaking, which mandate either the revelation of some bit of bare torso or some show of physical violence for every three pages of dialogue, are as good a lesson in the meaning of the misogynist aspect of voyeurism as Laura Mulvey's pioneer essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" and the flood of feminist film theory that followed. Caged Heat (1974), Demme's first directing effort for Corman, is a woman-in-prison flick that satisfies the guidelines neither of fetish object nor feminist critique. It suggests, however, that early on, he was aware of the connection between genre bends and gender twists -- the connection that is stunningly realized in The Silence of the Lambs.

As exhilarating as it is harrowing, The Silence of the Lambs is a slasher film in which the woman is hero rather than victim, pursuer rather than pursued. The film has two complex characters: the fledgling FBI agent, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), and Dr. Hannibal Lecter (performed with cobra-like relish by Anthony Hopkins). Starling has been chosen by her boss Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) for a special task: to find a serial killer nicknamed "Buffalo Bill" who is murdering women and doing something terrible with their skin.

Crawford believes that the brilliant psychiatrist and psychopath Hannibal Lecter, whose ferocious oral impulses find their release in language and, less acceptably, in human flesh, may know the killer's identity. Since Crawford has helped to confine Lecter for life in a hospital for the criminally insane, he doubts that the doctor will have much interest in helping him. He decides to use Clarice as a lure, sending her off to Lecter armed with a fake survey questionnaire. If Lecter is intrigued by Clarice, he won't be able to resist playing the omniscient analyst -- leaking clues. And if Clarice is really lucky, Lecter might even tell her what to do.

Faithful to the plot and incident of Thomas Harris's best-seller, Demme shifts its tone and meaning. The film makes Clarice even more central -- and more isolated -- than she was in the novel. As Foster plays her, she's remote in a way that signals something more complex than a novice's attempt at a professional attitude. Demme shoots the scenes between Lecter and Clarice in extreme close-up, shot-countershot, with the actors looking directly into the camera. You can see the tension in Clarice's face, her concentrated struggle not only to get the information she needs from Lecter, but also to avoid being overwhelmed by him -- to maintain her separation from him.

And to get it right. And to do it all herself. When Lecter points out her limitations and her failures, there's no doubt she feels ashamed and angry. But it's because she hasn't lived up to her own expectations, not because he thinks less of her.

In terms of the frightening Grimm's fairy-tale world that Demme's imagery suggests and Lecter's locutions zing home, Clarice's mission is not to marry the prince but to rescue the maiden (actually the senator's daughter who has become Buffalo Bill's "next special lady"). On that reversal, her identity rests. It's also what fascinates Lecter and wins him to her cause: unlike most heroes of either sex, she's more moved by vulnerability than she is attracted to power.

Amazingly fluid, The Silence of the Lambs shifts back and forth from Gothic fantasy to police procedural drama. Demme knows how to map psyche and history onto landscape and objects. The film is packed with 300 years of relics -- of white America. Every time Lecter sends Clarice on a treasure hunt, she finds a flag or two tucked away with the rusty rifles, dressmakers' dummies, and the odd severed head preserved in a jar. The flags look as if they've seen better days.

Detective stories and psychoanalysis both investigate traumas of the past. Here the two (Clarice's search for Buffalo Bill and Lecter's unorthodox analysis of Clarice) are mixed against a background of government buildings, chicken farms, and lonely airports where everyone is walking around looking bewildered -- as if they'd just noticed that they'd lost everything.

Near the end of the film, the camera lingers for a moment on a medium shot of a child's-size American flag leaning against a dusty army helmet and then cuts to a close-up of a sea-blue paper mobile with a butterfly design -- a bit of Chinatown decoration or a trophy from Vietnam, Bill's inheritance and his legacy. And this is why the final image is more disturbing than anything that has come before: the serial killer becomes an American gift to the world, a fragmentation bomb, ready to explode.
-- Amy Taubin

CAST
Clarice Starling: Jodie Foster
Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Anthony Hopkins
Jack Crawford: Scott Glenn
Jame Gumb: Ted Levine
Dr. Frederick Chilton: Anthony Heald
Catherine Martin: Brooke Smith
Senator Ruth Martin: Diane Baker
Lt. Boyle: Charles Napier
Young Clarice: Masha Skorodogatov
Ardelia Mapp: Kasi Lemmons
Barney: Frankie Faison
With: Jim Roche, Tracy Walter, Kenneth Utt, Dan Butler, Paul Lazar, Roger Corman, Ron Vawter, Chris Isaak

CREDITS
Director: Jonathan Demme
Producers: Edward Saxon
: Kenneth Utt
: Ron Bozman
Executive Producer: Gary Goetzman
Based on the novel by : Thomas Harris
Screenwriter: Ted Tally
Director of Photography: Tak Fujimoto
Editor: Craig McKay, A.C.E.
Production Designer: Kristi Zea
Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood
Casting: Howard Feuer
Music: Howard Shore

About the transfer
The Criterion Collection is proud to present The Silence of the Lambs in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. This exclusive digital transfer was made from the 35mm interpositive and the 35mm Dolby stereo magnetic master in consultation with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto.

A note about this disc:
The Silence of the Lambs is Criterion's first title to be mastered using the THX¨ system for excellence in video and sound.
Academy Award is the registered trademark and service mark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.