The Silence Of The Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 horror thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald and Ted Levine.

Mise en scene in the opening scene creates the atmosphere through the use of dim natural lighting, isolates settings, fog and its connotations (pathetic fallacy). The use of costumes as part of mise en scene is that the main charcter wears the same uniform as everyone else in the opening scnes, demonstrating her unimportance and lack of authority. Newspaper cuttings are used as prompts to the storyline as it is in Red Dragon.

Camera Angles in The Silence Of The Lambs vary from downward panning to forward tracking to backward tracking in the opening scene, giving the audience a range of shots documenting the situation. It also gives the illusion that the main character is bieng watched as the camera is positioned behind the trees. Extreme close ups are used to document expressions in correspondance to the paper cuttings on the wall. Medium long shots are also used to show the character in a particular setting that may be new to the scene. Blurred focus shots are used to show Clarese's consumption into the paper cuttings similar to that used in The Omen.

Editing is seamless in the opening however cuts do become more frequent as the main character makes her way through FBI offices, they also quicken to document her response to the articles on the wall, this builds up suspense and tension.

The Silence of the Lambs placed 7th on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. The American Film Institute named Hannibal Lecter as portrayed by Hopkins the number one film villain of all time and Clarice Starling as portrayed by Foster the sixth greatest film hero of all time.
In 1991, Silence of the Lambs was awarded Best Horror Film of the Year during the 2nd Horror Hall of Fame telecast.The film was a boxoffice sucess accumulating a sucess of $272,742,922 woeldwide