The Silence of the Lambs (BFI Modern Classics) (BFI Film Classics) - Softcover

Tasker, Yvonne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0851708714 ISBN 13: 9780851708713

Publisher: British Film Institute, 2002

Synopsis

In this study Yvonne Tasker explores the way the film weaves together gothic, horror and thriller conventions to generate both a distinctive variation on the cinematic portrayal of insanity and crime, and a fascinating intervention in the sexual politics of genre.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Released in 1990, "The Silence of the Lambs" is one of the defining films of 20th-century American cinema. Adapted from the Thomas Harris novel and directed by Jonathan Demme, its central characters, Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter, have become contemporary icons. Jodie Foster plays Starling, a rookie FBI agent on the trail of "Buffalo Bill", a serial killer who flays his victims. Anthony Hopkins plays Lecter, the psychopathic former psychiatrist whom Starling consults about Bill's identity. With its pairing of a perverse, invasive anti-hero and a questing, self-searching heroine, "The Silence of the Lambs" is a narrative of pursuit at several levels. In this study Yvonne Tasker explores the way the film weaves together gothic, horror and thriller conventions to generate both a distinctive variation on the cinematic portrayal of insanity and crime, and a fascinating intervention in the sexual politics of genre. She identifies the film as a key reference-point for tracking the 90s obsession with police procedure and serial killing, analyzing its key themes of reason and madness, identity and belonging, aspiration and transformation.

About the Author:

Yvonne Tasker is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (1998) and Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (1983).

About this edition

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0851708714
• ISBN 13: 9780851708713
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96