It's more than 30 years since The Silence of the Lambs was first released in cinemas – on Valentine's Day 1991 in the US, which seems a deliciously twisted choice on behalf of the film's distributors.
Yet despite its vintage, many images and dialogue remain burned into our consciousness from the movie about FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), and her pursuit of killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) with the aid of cannibal Dr Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins).
The gothic prison cell with its glass wall.
Serial killer Hannibal Lecter's piercing stare.
The moth in the throat.
"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."
What to Read Next
Watch The Silence of the Lambs on Prime Video
Of course, a film with such a startling look and iconic performances has been parodied numerous times, from Billy Crystal's entrance at the Academy Awards in 1992 to Chris Griffin acting out Buffalo Bill's dance in Family Guy and, best of all, the spoof off-Broadway musical Silence! (with a chorus of actors dressed as lambs and a NSFW duet between Bill and captive Catherine, called 'Put the F**king Lotion in the Basket').
But three decades on (and jokes aside), it's just as powerful as it was when it arrived. The movie is still only one of three ever to win the "Big Five" Oscars (actor, actress, director, film and screenplay – adapted from Thomas Harris's novel) and remains a huge influence on filmmakers and audiences alike.
How so? It changed serial killer movies forever by making the intelligent, well-mannered Lecter more than just a slasher-film monster, and for being a groundbreaking feminist thriller that paved the way for a more honest portrayal of female cops and agents on screen.
Everything from The X-Files and Homeland to Sicario, Zodiac and Mindhunter owe director Jonathan Demme's film (and Ted Tally's script) a huge debt.
And let's not forget that The Silence of the Lambs' phenomenal success has also led to a sequel, Hannibal, two prequels, Red Dragon (based on the same book that had already been adapted for the screen pre-Silence as Manhunter) and Hannibal Rising, a 2013 TV series also called Hannibal, and the recent US series Clarice, set a year after the events of the movie.
The Lecter universe has become an incredibly successful franchise – not bad when you consider that Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer and Meg Ryan, among others, all turned down roles thinking it too gruesome for audiences.
While the mix of horror (and yes, it really is a bloody scary masterpiece), police procedural and thriller made it unique at the time, it's the central role of new FBI agent Clarice Starling, and her strong yet vulnerable and truthful portrayal by Jodie Foster that sets The Silence of the Lambs apart from other movies featuring female officers of the law.
"The thing that I really love about Clarice Starling is that this may be one of the first times that I have seen a female hero that is not a female-steroid version of Arnold Schwarzenegger," Foster explained in an interview with Empire back in 1991. "This was not a woman running around in her underwear with a machine gun. Clarice is very competent and she is very human."
Foster was right that the role of Clarice Starling was a huge leap away from how women were usually portrayed in thrillers and action movies at the time – with one of the most obvious differences being how she is dressed.
Cinemagoers were used to seeing Sigourney Weaver battle an alien while wearing only a vest and pants, Debra Winger's federal investigator dressing in a strappy gown in 1987's Black Widow, or Theresa Russell running after bad guys sporting an impractical low-cut top in 1990's Impulse.
Clarice, in her oversized green coat, trousers and sensible brown lace-ups – "Your good bag and your cheap shoes" – is a far cry from those glamorous heroines, but there's much more to her than what she wears. She's a woman in a traditionally male role, as director Roger Corman (who has a small role in the movie) noted in the film's Making Of documentary, Inside the Labyrinth.
"In most movies, the hero is a man, so by making the hero a woman you are doing something different," he commented. In doing so, the filmmakers stepped away from the cop-movie formula everyone was accustomed to, and there are other tropes that are absent, too.
Unlike Bond or Jason Bourne, Starling is not a maverick or a rebel – as the film plays out, we see her following procedure, sticking to the rules and showing respect for the methods she has been taught at the FBI.
(The filmmakers worked with the Feds and filmed at their training facility at Quantico. The FBI were so impressed with the end result that, as producer Ron Bozman remembers in Inside the Labyrinth, they viewed Silence as a recruiting film for female agents).
In cop and spy thrillers made in the years before The Silence of the Lambs, audiences were used to seeing the man run in brandishing his gun and saving the day like a prince rescuing a princess from dragons, but here it is Clarice who – through dogged research and her interactions with Lecter – tracks down the woman held captive by killer Buffalo Bill.
"Jodie taught me that this is a story of a young woman trying to save the life of another young woman. Maybe it's a thriller. Maybe it's a horror movie, but you have to honour that core story," Demme told Deadline in a 2016 interview.
Or as Anthony Hopkins put it succinctly in the Making Of documentary: "She takes on the monsters, and destroys the monsters."
And she does far more than that. While everyone remembers Silence… for Hopkins' mesmerising portrayal of Lecter – even though he is only on screen for a total of 24 minutes – it is Foster's Clarice who is the heart of the story, and director Demme and screenwriter Ted Tally focus on her, making Clarice even more central than she is on the page in Harris's bestseller.
Throughout, director Demme expertly shows how Clarice Starling is subjected to the sinister male gaze at every turn as she goes about her job.
From the very start of the movie, as Starling runs through the Quantico assault course, male agents see her, look at her. (Note how, unusually, almost every character has a shot staring straight down the camera, putting us in Clarice's position and feeling those stares.)
When she is told to report to her superior Jack Crawford's (Scott Glenn) office, Clarice enters the elevator to go to his office and is surrounded by bigger, taller men who all seem to stare at this petite woman in their midst.
Starling is in a male-dominated world, the movie reminds us, whether standing in a room full of suspicious local sheriffs while Crawford abandons her to examine a body (an act she later calls him on), or when she is objectified by the various men who make advances towards her, including Lecter's smug jailer Dr Chilton (Anthony Heald).
But Clarice – who is never given a romantic interest in the movie, unless you count meek entomologist Dr Pilcher – is more than every man's equal in the film, she is also the only person who can connect to Hannibal Lecter and has the strength to take on his twisted intelligence.
She is a woman who knows that she has to be as good as – or better – than every man she comes up against, and as Jodie Foster said in her 1992 Academy Awards Best Actress acceptance speech, that makes Clarice Starling an "incredibly strong and beautiful feminist hero that I'm so proud of".
Starling – thanks to Jodie Foster's strong performance of screenwriter Tally's words – changed the game for how female cops were portrayed in movies and TV, from Gillian Anderson's smart, inquiring Scully in The X-Files to Emily Blunt's unrelenting FBI agent in Sicario.
It's a shame that Clarice's follow-up screen appearance, in Ridley Scott's 2001 thriller, Hannibal (based on Harris's 1999 book), isn't true to the woman we cheered throughout The Silence of the Lambs.
Julianne Moore, taking on the role of Clarice, wears a slashed-to-the-navel dress while she watches Lecter feed a man his own brains, for heaven's sake – a betrayal of the character that may go some way to explaining why both Foster and director Demme refused to return for the sequel.
Regardless, the power of The Silence of the Lambs to spook, thrill and chill us hasn't diminished over time, and it is just as frightening and gripping now as 31 years ago when cinemagoers watched (through their hands, most likely) FBI Agent Starling walk along that dark prison corridor to meet Dr Lecter for the very first time.
The Silence of the Lambs is available to watch now on Prime Video.
Best Entertainment and Tech Deals
Coronation Street X Joanie - Gilroy Retro Newton And Ridley Sweatshirt
Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy
Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times, OK!, The Guardian and Grazia, is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies.
She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids. In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic, and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
