A TASTE OF HOME
Tamales from Venezuela and more from immigrant chefs» P.62MI
CH
AE
L^ O
CH
S^ A
RC
HI
VE
Sʔ
GE
TT
Y ^
TO
P^ R
IG
HT
:^ A
PO
MA
RE
Sʔ
GE
TT
Y
NEWSWEEK.COM 59
BYH. ALAN SCOTT
@HAlanScottPicture, Best Actor (Hopkins), Best Actress (Foster),
Best Director (Jonathan Demme) and Best Adapted
Screenplay (Ted Tally). (The two other films with
that distinction are 1934’s It Happened One Night
and 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.)
Jodie Foster considers the film her best, largely
due to the script and direction. She tells Newsweek:
“Jonathan Demme—[who died in 2017] was just this
fun, silly, joyful, very childlike person—the fact that
he managed to make such a serious and moving film
and didn’t kind of turn it into camp, he just struck
the perfect tone.”
The film was a critical and box office success,
becoming the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1991.
A success like that typically warrants a quick turn-
around for a sequel, but not so with Lambs.
“We were all really interested in
the sequel because Thomas Harris
was writing a new book and he kept
saying that it was coming out and he
wouldn’t let anybody see it,” says Fos-
ter. “We waited 10 years.”as soon as the silence of the lambs was
released on February 14, 1991, it was clear this
wasn’t your ordinary horror film.
“The Silence of the Lambs is an electrifying exer-
cise in suspense,” David Ansen wrote in his review
for Newsweek. “One need only have a healthy appe-
tite for fear to acknowledge that thrillers don’t get
much more thrilling.”
Based on the 1988 Thomas Harris novel, the film
follows Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), a young FBI
agent hunting down “Buffalo Bill” (Ted Levine), a
serial killer. To find Bill, Starling must work with
Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), an impris-
oned psychiatrist and cannibal serial killer with a
notorious passion for fava beans and chianti.
Thirty years later, the film continues to thrill audi-
ences and is widely considered one of
the best horror films of all-time. Part
of that legacy is due to the film’s Oscar
record: it was the first horror film to
win Best Picture and only the third
film to win the top five awards: BestThe Silence of
the Lambs at 30:
Thrilling
(and Complicated)
The movie showcased a groundbreaking heroine,
a charismatic cannibal and a problematic bad guyMOVIES