THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama / Horror

Director: Jonathan Demme

Cast: Jodie Foster / Anthony Hopkins / Scott Glenn

Plot

FBI trainee Clarice Starling is assigned to interview imprisoned serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter regarding his knowledge of fellow psychopath “Buffalo Bill.”  Can Starling get the information she needs from the clever Lecter before Bill claims another victim.

What I Liked

Back in the 1990s, it seemed like there was always some serial killer-based psychological thriller in the theater.  “Seven,” “Kiss the Girls,” “The Bone Collector,” “Fallen,” “Copycat,” the list goes on.  With its clever script, riveting performances, and genre-transcending production, “The Silence of the Lambs” is the film that kicked off the trend, making it one of the most influential films of the era.

His performance as Hannibal Lecter allowed Anthony Hopkins to go from highly regarded actor to full-fledged acting legend.  He also established the character as one of the great film villains and a classic movie monster on the level of a Dracula, Norman Bates, or Freddy Kreuger.   His Lecter is irresistibly manipulative, darkly amusing, and absolutely creepy in equal measure.  Hopkins (and through him, Lecter) is without a doubt the prime reason this film is regarded as a classic.

However, one cannot ignore the importance of Jodie Foster, who is equally capable in her performance of Starling, even if her character is not as juicy as the chilling, demented Lecter.  Starling is the foil against whom Lecter is allowed to shine, as well as the relatable character can be used by the audience as a conduit into Lecter’s demented perspectives.  Starling’s verbal jousting with Lecter is what separates this film’s unique power and timelessness.  Later thrillers tried to piece together similar confrontations, but is the way that Lecter and Hopkins deliver these scenes that truly set s this one apart.

Incidentally, Ted Levine is also pretty damn frightening as the skin coveting Buffalo Bill.

What I Didn’t Like

The character of Catherine Martin, while admirably resourceful and brave, is not very convincing to me as a person who has been trapped for days in a dungeon pit by a man who is clearly bent on murdering her.

Most Memorable Scene

As mentioned previously, the scenes of verbal sparring between Lecter and Starling are the most iconic moments of this film.  Nonetheless, like any good climax, the most emotionally powerful moment of the film to me is when Clarice unwittingly stumbles upon the killer and is drawn into his home.  When he initially escapes her attempted arrest and leads her on a terrifying pursuit through his dungeon-like basement, that the anxiety really starts.  Even watching this for the I-don’t-know-how-many time, I was still on the edge of my seat, gritting my teeth, my muscles reflexively tightened.  That’s because the terror on Jodie Foster’s face is completely believable and relatable.  Her entire body appears stricken with adrenaline, and understandably so.  It’s Foster’s change to show that she is every bit the actor that Hopkins is and has an equal mastery over her audience, and succeeds at both.

My Rating: 5 out of 5

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: William Holden / Gloria Swanson / Nancy Olson

Plot:

Out of work writer Joe Gillis recounts his final days as the reluctant writing partner and companion of Norma Desmond, who was once one of Hollywood’s great beauties of the silent era.  With her stardom long behind her, Desmond is now a delusional recluse fixated upon the younger writer, whom she clings to as her last hope of recapturing her former glory.

What I Liked

Like any halfway decent noir film, “Sunset Boulevard” is narrated by a dead man.  We know Joe Gillis is dead about one minute in.  That’s not to say that the film is a pure representation of the noir subgenre; it transcends the limitations of categorization.  It has many of the stock characters, gimmicks, and themes of noir: the hard-luck cynic for a protagonist responsible the aforementioned narration, a grim murder, the Los Angeles backdrop, the obsessive use of shadow and sharp angles, and the snuffing out of all things naïve.  However, there are also strong elements of showbiz drama, psychological thriller, and cultural satire.  There is even the faint trace of the horror in the sense of decay and hopelessness that persists throughout its two hour length.  In one of the film’s many famous moments, faded movie star Norma Desmond describes herself as bigger than the movies (“I am big; it’s the pictures that got small.”). In similar fashion, “Sunset Boulevard” refuses the limited confines of simpler film-making.

Though Gillis is technically the film’s main character, it is Desmond who serves as the crux of the film’s intrigue.  In a masterstroke of casting, she is played with magnificence by Gloria Swanson, who, like the character herself, was a largely forgotten star from Hollywood’s silent era.  She lurks about her empty palace of a home with a purposeless grandiloquence that would be downright hilarious if it weren’t absolutely tragic.  Her every gesture and word is a performance for an audience that exists nowhere for her but in her own imagination.  The character is one part Charles Dickens’s Miss Havisham (who is referenced early in the film), one part Orson Welles’s Charles Foster Kane, and one part Swanson herself; she is as compelling to witness as all three put together.  Swanson is exactly as over-the-top as she needs to be while portraying a psychopath who knows of no other way to hide her shattered self-esteem than with pretension and egomania.  When watching her, one wonders where Desmond ends and Swanson begins, and vice versa; that’s what acting is supposed to be.

Incidentally, Swanson isn’t the only major figure of the silent cinema to show up.  Cecil B. DeMille and Buster Keaton actually play themselves while Erich von Stroheim is chilling as Max, Desmond’s former director and ex-husband, who has been reduced to a doting manservant.

What I Didn’t Like

Where the character of Desmond completely destroys and rebuilds the cliché evil dame of noir film, main character Joe Gillis (played by William Holden) is the noir cliché incarnate.  Granted, he does famously start our film as a corpse floating in face-down in a pool and that’s a pretty good jumping off point for any movie, but beyond that the guy is pretty much a bore.  Perhaps he was written so blank so that the audience can easily insert themselves into Gillis in order to properly experience Desmond in all her pathetic glory through his eyes.  Either way, as the dead man told his tale, I found myself impatient for the part where he goes for that final, bullet-riddled swim.

Most Memorable Scene

As the film was drawing to its close, I began thinking of several key moments that had the potential to stick with me the most and be recognized in this part of my entry.  Then came the closing minute, which not only features what is easily the most famous line of the film but also gives us the inevitable completion to Desmond’s psychological collapse.  She looks straight at us – that audience she and only she has been aware of all along – as horrifically mesmerizing as Medusa.  She leers at us, lures us, and scoffs at us in a matter of seconds and we’re reminded of an earlier line in the film, “We didn’t need dialogue.  We had faces!”  Then, stepping even closer until we have nothing to look at but her, she utters those final, unsettling words, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”  With that, we know now there is no escape from the madness; not for Desmond and not for ourselves.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5

HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Comedy

Director: Howard Hawks

Cast: Rosalind Russell / Cary Grant / Ralph Bellamy

Plot

After months abroad, star reporter Hildy Johnson returns to the Morning Post office and editor Walter Burns, who also happens to be her ex-husband, to announce her engagement and intent to live as a suburban housewife.  Walter subsequently uses all of his considerable connections and guile to lure Johnson back into the newspaper game.

What I Liked

“His Girl Friday” is a mainstream screwball comedy with a subversive tinge that adds to its continued appeal.  Typewriter-like rat-a-tat-tat banter between tough-talking urbanites of the opposing sexes is, above all else, the trademark of screwball comedy and there is perhaps more of that here than in any other example of the subgenre that I’ve ever seen.  Reporters Johnson (Rosalind Russell) and Burns (Cary Grant), along with the rest of their hard-boiled ilk, fire off one liners as fast as is humanly possible.  However, if one is able to concentrate hard enough to get beyond the tough talking dialogue, one finds comedy of a different kind: satire. 

The filmmakers did a decent job of constructing a not-so-thinly veiled send-up of the rampant political corruption in local New York politics, with virtually every civic authority presented as a combination of bumbling, pompous, and crooked in varying degrees, depending on the character.  Reference to political figures and problems of the era from the local (ward politicians) to the international (Hitler) are peppered through the dialogue and are strongly present in the sub-plot of a condemned man about to hang in order to serve the aspirations of a political machine as election day draws near.

There is also a much subtler twinge of sexual politics in the film.  “His Girl Friday” has been referred to by some as a feminist film; this exaggerates the case a bit.  Hildy Johnson, despite being a career woman, has clearly never been more than the titular “Girl Friday” to her boss, who also happens to have been her husband until recently.  Though she does spends much of the film operating on her own, in her life overall she seems unable to function without a man guiding her ambitions.  Still, compared to most female film characters of the day, Hildy is certainly a progressive woman.  Temporarily lured by the social pressure to conform to society’s dictation that she must be a married mother serving a dull husband in a safe career, she eventually realizes this is not who she is, nor who she wants to be, and returns to her true passion, being a “newspaper man.”  There are also a few jokes referring to the liberal-minded woman enjoying pre-marital romps with men.  They're uttered so quickly that they pass almost without notice.  But if you pay attention they're there.

What I Didn’t Like

Despite these leanings to social commentary, all in all “His Girl Friday” is a disappointingly typical comedy for its period.  There is nothing original nor dazzlingly entertaining here.  The plot and dialogue trudge out many of the same old comedy-of-the-sexes clichés we’re used to from other films of the era and does very little new with those dynamics.  Many have praised Russell and Grant for their performances but honestly, while a certain comradery did come across, I felt no sexual tension between the pair and really felt like both just phoned in their performances.  They memorized their lines and shouted them out over each other as fast as they could.  Grant makes a few funny faces, Russell rolls her eyes.  That’s about the extent of it.

Most Memorable Scene

The best scene of the film had neither the film’s leading man or leading lady in it at all.  It actually opens with the Sheriff and Mayor plotting their next move with an impending scandal about to hit just before the election.  Veteran character actor Billy Gilbert enters through a door steals the scene while playing a dim-witted runner for the Governor.  The efforts of the Mayor to subsequently corrupt the unwitting Gilbert’s character, Mr. Pettibone, into betraying the Governor and aiding the local political machine are hilariously futile as Pettibone is simply too oblivious to be anything but honest.  The satire is poignant, the absurdity hilarious, and Gilbert gets the more laughs than everyone else in the film combined.

My Rating: 3.5 out 5