The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)

 ●  English ● 1 hr 58 mins

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This spine chilling and suspenseful investigative thriller revolves around a young and inexperienced FBI agent Clarice Starling, who is assigned to help find a missing woman and save her from a psychopathic serial killer who skins his victims. Clarice attempts to gain a better insight into the twisted mind of the killer by talking to another psychopath Hannibal Lecter, who used to be a respected psychiatrist. FBI agent Jack Crawford believes that Lecter, who is also a very powerful and clever mind manipulator, has the answers to their questions and can help locate the killer. However, Clarice must first gain Lecter's confidence before the inmate will give away any information. Can the young and inexperienced Clarice succeed in eliciting useful information from the convoluted Lecter, without becoming pray to his manipulations and machinations?
See Storyline (May Contain Spoilers)

Cast: Jodie Foster

Crew: Jonathan Demme (Director), Tak Fujimoto (Director of Photography), Howard Shore (Music Director)

Rating: A (India)

Genres: Crime, Drama, Thriller

Release Dates: 14 Feb 1991 (India)

Tagline: May The Silence Be Broken!!

Did you know? At 24 minutes and 52 seconds, Anthony Hopkins's performance in this movie is the second shortest to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, with David Niven in Separate Tables (1958) beating him by one minute. Read More
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Direction

Director

Production

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Writers

Screenplay Writer
Novelist

Camera and Electrical

Director of Photography

Music

Music Director

Art

Art Director

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Film Type:
Feature
Language:
English
Colour Info:
Color
Sound Mix:
Dolby SR
Frame Rate:
24 fps
Aspect Ratio:
1.85:1 (Flat)
Stereoscopy:
No
Taglines:
May The Silence Be Broken!!
To enter the mind of a killer she must challenge the mind of a madman.
Prepare yourself for the most exciting, mesmerising and terrifying two hours of your life!
Movie Connection(s):
Spoofed in: Tamizh Padam 2 (Tamil)
Reference: Eden (English)
Remade as: Sangharsh (Hindi)
Reference: This Means War (English)
Goofs:
Character Error
The autopsy scene contains at least 8 errors. Among them, the body was fingerprinted without collecting evidence under the victims fingernails, and the ink would have destroyed the evidence. You cannot get fingerprints off a body in that condition.

Character Error
Clarice says she double-majored in criminology and psychology at the University of Virginia. UVA has never offered a criminology major.

Character Error
When Jack Crawford describes who will be escorting Starling at the asylum, he calls Dr. Chilton "Dr. Chilnet."

Character Error
Jack Crawford says Clarice graduated magna cum laude from UVA, but UVA does not award that distinction to psychology majors.

Character Error
Sgt Tate tells an officer to call in the SWAT team. Memphis has no SWAT team, but it has a TACT team.

Character Error
When Clarice visits the entomologists to identify the moth pupa, they say while examining the chrysalis that it must've been specially raised from imported eggs and fed "honey and nightshade". Deaths Head moth larvae, like most caterpillars, eat only vegetation; the adult moths eat honey.

Continuity
The ring of sweat on Clarice's sweatshirt as she is running on the Quantico course in the beginning of the movie covers her body almost from shoulder to shoulder. When she gets called into Crawford's office, it is significantly smaller.

Continuity
During the autopsy scene, they remove the bug cocoon from the victim and insert it into a small jar with the bug antenna pointing to the bottom of the jar. The next next shot shows Clarice pouring fluid into the jar with the antenna pointing up.

Continuity
As Clarice is looking through the microfilm, the pen in her mouth switches places several times.

Crew/Equipment Visible
A black string is attached to the back of the moth that lands on the red roll of string at Buffalo Bill's house. It's clearly visible in high definition.

Errors in Geography
When Hannibal is imprisoned in Memphis, the sign outside the Shelby county courthouse is shown, in dim light, to be a museum.

Errors in Geography
Nearly all the vehicles in the film have inspection stickers in the windshield indicating registration in Pittsburgh, PA, where none of the action takes place.

Errors in Geography
The military aircraft heading toward Calument City has California Air Guard on the side, which is not likely for planes coming from Virginia.

Errors in Geography
Clarice runs a course on a Marine Corps Base in Quantico, VA, which is also home to the FBI Academy. The Endurance Course is about 5 miles long throughout the Quantico highlands, in the Marine part, not the FBI part. At the cargo net obstacle, she was nearly at the end of the course, about 2-3 miles from the FBI Academy. A road is to the left on the screen, and nothing but miles of woods is on her right, when the FBI agent comes out and says that Crawford wants to speak to her. It would've been faster and more logical for her to finish the course, not run 3-4 miles back through the woods to the FBI academy.

Factual Mistake
When Catherine Martin drives into the parking area, the killer looks right into the headlights of her car while wearing night-vision goggles, but he isn't blinded. Goggles of that time might have been permanently damaged. Newer goggles have automatic protection mechanisms.

Factual Mistake
West Virginia State Police uniforms have been forest green since the early 1900's. Their vehicles are blue, with Old Gold and the State Seal on the door. The director asked the WV Department of Public Safety to use some State Police in the movie, but he didn't like the colors of their uniforms. When he asked them to change into the Brown uniforms, they refused and left the set.

Factual Mistake
The film refers to "iron sulfide, also known as 'fool's gold'." Iron sulfide, more specifically, iron (II) sulfide or FeS, is an unstable chemical compound that's usually brown or black. The fool's gold they refer to is commonly known as pyrite, and its proper name is iron (II) disulfide (FeS2). Even if Agent Starling and Dr. Lecter knew enough about chemistry to know the chemical composition of fool's gold, she would have known it as either pyrite or iron disulfide.

Miscellaneous
In the closing credits, thanks is given to The "Behavorial" Science Unit. The correct spelling is behavioral.

Revealing Mistakes
As Forensics comes to take photos of the victim's body, the "corpse" visibly blinks as hands touch its face.

Revealing Mistakes
When Clarice is talking to Buffalo Bill in his back room, a moth is filmed landing on a cotton reel. After the moth has settled, a thread is visible attached to it. Presumably the shot was filmed in reverse, and the moth was yanked off the reel.

Revealing Mistakes
When Clarice is interviewing Lecter, a padlock on his cell door goes from locked to unlocked between scenes.

Revealing Mistakes
When Clarice is researching Lecter in Quantico by reading old newspaper articles on microfilm, the same text regarding developments at some vague governmental conference appears over and over again surrounding the Lecter articles in all four separate newspapers she views.

Revealing Mistakes
During Lector's escape, the "swat" team arrives and jumps out of the police car at the courthouse with their Ithica 37 shotguns. All of them are shown chambering their rounds except the the officer on the right, who pulls back again on the fore stock and asks "ready?" That should've ejected a shell and left the gun unloaded.
Trivia:
Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) never blinks throughout the film.

At 24 minutes and 52 seconds, Anthony Hopkins's performance in this movie is the second shortest to ever win an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, with David Niven in Separate Tables (1958) beating him by one minute.

This film was inspired by the real-life relationship between University of Washington criminology professor and profiler Robert Keppel and serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy helped Keppel investigate the Green River Serial Killings in Washington. Bundy was executed January 24, 1989. The Green River Killings were finally solved in 2001, when Gary Ridgway was arrested. On November 5, 2003, in a Seattle courtroom, Ridgway plead guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first degree murder.

Anthony Hopkins studied files of serial killers to prepare for his role. He also visited prisons and studied convicted murderers and was present during some court hearings concerning serial killings.

Jodie Foster has said that during the first meeting between Lecter and Starling, Anthony Hopkins's mocking of her southern accent was improvised on the spot. Foster's horrified reaction was genuine; she felt personally attacked. She later thanked Hopkins for generating such an honest reaction.

This film won Academy Awards in all the top five categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

This film is the first (and so far only) horror movie to win an Oscar for Best Picture.