6 Little Known Tics That Made Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal So Captivating
4. His Habit Of Staring Directly Into The Camera
Before Clarice meets with Dr Lecter for the first time she’s told by her FBI mentor Jack Crawford that “you don’t want Hannibal Lecter inside your head”. It’s a warning to both Clarice and the audience, yet soon after Hopkins appears on screen neither Clarice nor us really have a say in this matter.
You see, Jonathan Demme was a huge fan of the close-up point-of-view shot and in fact once called it “the most powerful shot of all” thanks to its effect of putting the audience in the shoes of a certain character and really seeing what they are seeing.
Accordingly, Demme had Hopkins shoot a lot of scenes straight to camera so that we’re in Clarice’s cheap, second-rate shoes as Hannibal so affectionately calls them. In a series of uncomfortably intimate close-up POV shots in which Hannibal’s ever so slightly sneering face dominates the screen and we’re fixed by his steely gaze it soon turns out we have no choice: he’s already inside our heads.
It’s a jarring, fourth wall-shattering technique that place us the audience face to face with a psychopath and while as off-putting as that is it’s also entirely captivating and difficult to tear our eyes away from.
Being a big fan of this type of shot, it’s a technique that Demme uses with other characters throughout The Silence of the Lambs but there’s something rather unique about Hopkins’ performance that makes his close-ups far more unnerving …