The Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991, directed by Jonathan Demme. This film was based on a novel written by

Thomas Harris in 1988. Long story short, the film is centered around an FBI trainee named Clarice Starling who tries to get serial cannibal and psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter's help on her chase of a second serial killer, who goes by the name "Buffalo Bill". 

The case is introduced about 5 minutes into the film, after the camera follows Clarice into the office of one of her superiors

at the FBI Academy. On the chalkboard, is written "Skins, signature?". As we later learn, Buffalo Bill skins his victims, to make clothes out of afterward. However, that is a small detail I noticed. The main introduction happens immediately after, when Clarice looks at a corkboard where pictures of victims, evidence, and locations are pinned up- a newspaper reads "Bill Skins Fifth" (this actually reminded me of my horror film, where the murderer pins up polaroids of her victims, although it's actually the complete opposite of what is portrayed here where the police are pinning up the evidence). The camera does a moving close up, showing the audience a few skinned victims before giving the audience a close up of the newspaper so they can read it if they didn't notice the detail before. The dialogue in this section is good, it gives the audience enough background information without seeming like they're just trying to throw information on the audience. Clarice says "Hannibal the Cannibal", portraying that as some kind of nickname the students at the FBI Academy gave him, instead of just background information the audience needs before continuing on with the rest of the movie. (This is just a nitpicky thing on my part, but I didn't really like the way that Clarice's actress spoke, it was too quiet and had a kind of confusing accent that took me a minute to understand what she was saying, but her acting was really good!). The dialogue had a nice transition going from Clarice getting her assignment to when she is in the asylum. There was no walking required, no time pass, but instead, she asked Crawford "What is he?", which transitioned into the doctor at the asylum saying "He's a monster". I thought it was really clever and something I'll keep in mind for my future films! When the doctor is trying to intimidate Clarice, scare her into following the rules, the lights turn a striking red. The angles the DP used make the audience feel uncomfortable, almost creeped out- they're too close, too confusing almost. The doctor tells a story about a nurse that got hurt by Lecter, and although we never saw the picture he showed Clarice, the audience can picture it. When meeting Hannibal, the set design was very well done. Each of the three cells before him just had iron bars, but his had plexiglass, and there were drawings, and he was standing there waiting for her (very creepy!!). While they were speaking, the camera was doing a slow dolly in (although I think it was handheld) as what he was saying became more and more important, getting inside Clarice's head. The choice to have a woman as the main character was an obvious choice, with mostly male agents/police officers with two male serial killers (buffalo bill killing only women), there was a gender rift which caused a sort of power struggle between the strong and independent female agent and all the males around her. She was often the only woman in the room, constantly being looked at and sexualized, treated as if she had no place telling them what to do. Continuing with these, that power play was represented in the angles the DP chose. As Starling felt more powerful, the angle would be lower under her, showing her as large and strong. However, when she felt looked down upon or weak, especially speaking with Lecter, the camera angle often was above her, looking down at her to make her seem small and weak. This isn't only with Starling though. When the film shows Buffalo Bill and his victim, she is way, far below him in a well. This way, she is the weakest, there is no way for her to get back the power, while he is far above her and the camera is almost laying directly on the ground looking up at him. At one point, a guy needed to be on the ground with blood dripping off of him, and in case they needed to do the scenes multiple times, they had him fall perfectly on the carpet so he wouldn't get blood on the ground and they could just change out the carpet to redo the scene (I noticed this because of my horror film, we could only do it once because getting blood on his shirt would stain it and we didn't have a second chance). 

I honestly didn't really like the camera work for most of this film, although this DP and I may just have different styles. There

was a lot of zooming, which seemed kind of awkward to me, almost telling the audience directly that "this was filmed! There is a camera here!". Some of the shots were also shaky, which I understand was a stylistic choice but I would have either gone for still close-ups (as with the evidence on the corkboard) or smooth panning. When Clarice was talking to Crawford about her assignment, there was a close up of Crawford's face which had him looking directly into the camera. I thought this shot was too intimate, as this is one of the only times we see him in the film. It also didn't make logical sense to me, as Clarice was sitting slightly to the right of him, and the camera angle was a straight on shot. Sometimes I noticed that the shots were slightly out of focus, especially close up shots that were followed by another close up that was in very clear focus. 

The music was very well done. It had a consistent style to it, so that eventually your mind gets used to it and doesn't really

notice that it's there until it is very loud and suspenseful. They used the loud and suspenseful music at times when there was a close-up, which added to the anxiety the viewer felt. The lighting and dialogue were honestly my favorite parts though, the dialogue was very well done (which is probably because it was first written as a novel, where you don't get these sort of visuals, and then adapted to film, where the visuals and novel type dialogue worked very well together to make a smooth story). I loved the part about the "Dead Man's Moth", which ended up being a great clue in the case (as well as being a part of the movie poster!). The symbolism, although not very hidden, was strong- how the moth was found shoved in the back of the throat of the dead victim's throats. 

I would absolutely recommend this movie. At the beginning, I felt kind of iffy about it, but as it went on I was more and more

invested and figuring out how the DP and the director played all of this to make it into a cohesive and easy to understand story while still leaving some details to the imagination and trying to get the audience to discover some of the plot on their own. (okay telling this might spoil the movie so I won't, but there was one part of this movie that had me SO SHOOK!!! Like I was not expecting it at all and it was so well done!)