8. The Silence Of The Lambs Uses Some Clever Camera Tricks
Of course The Silence Of The Lambs is a smart film. Everybody knows that. Jonathan Demme is a very smart director, and it's not like they give out Oscars to stupid films. The Oscars might be given by stupid people, but that's a different thing entirely. Robert Harris's Hannibal Lecter books are pulpy, but pretty intelligent. So too is Demme's adaptation of The Silence Of The Lambs, with Anthony Hopkins acquitting himself in a career-defining manner as the surprisingly polite and erudite gentleman cannibal. Something you may not have picked up on in these famous scenes between him and Jodie Foster's FBI cadet Clarice Starling. They're certainly very tense, those interviews between Clarice and Hannibal, but why is that exactly? Because of Demme's direction, and Tak Fujimoto's cinematography. Go back and watch the scene, and you'll see that the camera's position changes depending on who's in charge at any given moment in their conversations: low angles to make the actor look bigger when winning, from above so they look smaller when losing.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
