His cell is decorated with paintings that demonstrate artistic talent and a vibrant imagination. Instead he is calm, composed, well spoken and smiling. The inmates we see before Lecter are outwardly psychotic and mentally unstable, and as we venture further down the hallway our expectations for the insanity of Lecter grow. Our journey to meet Lecter ends with a long walk through the hallway of the most deranged and psychopathic inmates the asylum houses, with Lecter’s cell at the end. During a drawn out descent from his office to the lower levels of the asylum where Lecter is kept, Chilton tells Starling of a time where Lecter managed to briefly escape and eat the tongue out of a nurse’s mouth, never letting his heart rate exceed 85. Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is first told that she is to meet with him by agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), who emphasizes to her “you don’t want Hannibal Lecter inside your head.” The lengthy build up continues in the office of Frederick Chilton (Anthony Heald), where he discusses Lecter with a sense of morbid exaltation. The anticipation built in the lead-up to meeting Lecter for the first time is enormous. Hopkins’ acting was superb and well deserving of the win, but it would not have been possible if it weren’t for the immense anticipation and aura built around the character Hannibal while Lecter is off screen. His performance is in fact so good that it earned him an Oscar for Best Actor despite appearing on screen for only 16 minutes, the smallest screen time ever needed to win that award. He has a point.In The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Anthony Hopkins delivers a stellar performance as the convicted serial killer Hannibal Lecter. He put our fascination with the cannibal down to the fact that, really, we all like to be scared. We must watch, but we don’t want to.Ī pleasant surprise is how Sir Anthony Hopkins once described the audience’s reaction to his most famous role. The moment he gently rubs Clarice’s finger as he passes her the case files, his emotionless face as he calmly bludgeons a guard to death then looks around his cell for a cutthroat razor, the fast slurping sound he makes as a viewer you are simultaneously nauseated and compelled. The point that needs to be emphasised is that Hopkins gives a unique and utterly convincing performance. It is possible to go through every one of Sir Anthony’s scenes with a fine-toothed comb and a beginner’s guide to psychology, but we would be here for days. You see the flash of anger in his eyes – it’s subtle, but it’s there – and he changes his tone to crass and offensive. Lecter is courteous towards the senator (whilst giving her fake information) until a police officer interrupts him. It is in this scene – successfully parodied in The Simpsons and elsewhere – where Lecter is strapped to an upright gurney in a straitjacket and muzzle to speak with Senator Ruth Martin, whose daughter has been kidnapped by Buffalo Bill. Lecter has been moved from Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and is now in Memphis, Tennessee. We see this more noticeably in a later scene in the film. Hopkins is able to communicate arrogance, anger, glee, and a perverse sort of paternal admiration with the smallest movement of his eyes and lips. It’s a brilliant introduction, which morphs into a fascinating two-hander as agent and sociopath begin to size each other up. ‘Good morning,’ he says, how you might imagine a fox says good morning to a chicken. She walks slowly down that corridor of cells until she is confronted with the once-brilliant psychiatrist, standing with his arms at his sides, impeccable posture. Our first glimpse of Dr Lecter is through Agent Starling’s eyes (quite literally, as director Jonathan Demme decided that characters would talk directly to camera when addressing Starling so the audience would relate to her better). That cold, unblinking gaze of Lecter’s, and his curious high voice, stay with the viewer – lingering, still unnerving – long after the film has ended. He also took inspiration from reptiles – who only blink when they want to – and based his voice on a mixture of Truman Capote and Katharine Hepburn. In preparation for the role, he studied serial killers and visited prisons. As wonderful as Foster’s performance is, it is Hopkins who steals the film (and the odd face… ).
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