'The Silence of the Lambs' snubbed at the Oscars

I know, how can I say that? The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is one of only three films in history to win all top five Ocsars, taking out Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also nominated for Oscars for its extraordinary sound work and Craig McKay's solid editing, although I would argue that this last nomination is mainly in recognition of the clever misdirection in the scene where Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) arrives at the house of serial killer Jame Gumb (Ted Levine), and that this was really an example of great screenwriting (the gag comes from Ted Tally's screenplay). Not that McKay's work was not worthy of the nomination, and it's a moot point in any case - no film in 1991 was going to take the editing Oscar away from Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia for their jaw dropping work on Oliver Stone's JFK.

However, it is my belief that The Silence of the Lambs was critically overlooked in several other categories. Here are five Oscars that this one should have been up for.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Snot-nosed realism will get you a shot at an Oscar in a leading role. For the supporting roles, though, the Academy favours over the top - they like nothing better than seeing a long overlooked great actor or big Hollywood star whooping it up in a colourfully written smaller part. How else to explain Judi Dench, after decades of superb work in theatre, television, and film, finally getting an Oscar for doing NOTHING in Shakespeare in Love (1998)? Look at the introduction of Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith) in The Silence of the Lambs - we see her singing along to 'American Girl' as she drives home, waving up to her pet cat from the apartment carpark, and making the ill-fated decision to assist the man with his arm in a cast struggling to load a couch into his van. Such is the skill of Brooke Smith in these scenes that these simple elements come together to create a complete characterisation. Later in the film, thrown down into a deep pit by her tormentor, she is already someone we know, even though she has already been placed in an alien situation. The film is full of terrific acting like this - the characters played by Kasi Lemmons and Anthony Heald are not soon forgotten (which is a remarkable achievement when you consider the quality of the leading performances), and Lauren Roselli works wonders in her single scene. Which is not to overlook the fact that a lot of the magic started with Ted Tally's note perfect screenplay. Brooke Smith is the standout here, and she's a wonderful actor - always a pleasure to see her pop up (unexpectedly, because as a great actor as opposed to a star, no one advertises her presence) in a film or television show. And Ted Levine - one of Hollywood's true chameleons - is terrific as the disturbed serial killer, Jame Gumb. His scenes with Brooke Smith are wonderful, and he brings a superb animal cunning to later scenes with Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling.

Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction

These categories truly are the beauty contests of the Oscars. For cinematography, the Academy's bias is often towards spectacle over visual story-telling. Dances With Wolves (the winner that year) is a gorgeous film, but cinematographer Dean Semler's main contribution was waiting for the right moment to shoot some beautiful landscapes. Of course, I'm over simplifying, and Semler deserves every accolade, but a film in which choices of framing and depth of field define psychology and reveal character will always be passed over in favour of a film with beautiful imagery. Thus the brilliant work of Tak Fujimoto was overlooked, not the only time he's had fine worked ignored by the Academy. Similarly, nominations for art direction often go to period pieces or science fiction/fantasy films - in other words, films where the art direction is obvious. And so the work of production designer Kristi Zea and art director Tim Galvin, which often informs us about characters before we meet them (before we see the steely gaze of Scott Glenn's FBI agent Jack Crawford, we've already seen the wall of newspaper clippings behind his desk, and have already - if subconsciously - made assumptions about the type of person he is) was also ignored. The greatness of The Silence of the Lambs is in every aspect of the production serving the story and characters in the best possible ways. The performances are as compelling as they are because Kristi Zea places the characters in their own worlds, and Tak Fujimoto studies them in bold extended close-ups.

Best Original Score

It is my opinion that Howard Shore has been creating Oscar calibre scores since at least The Fly in 1986. It was not until 2002 that the Academy finally recognised him with a nomination (and subsequent win) for his score for The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), somehow managing to overlook remarkable scores such as Dead Ringers (1988), Ed Wood (1994), Se7en (1995), and Crash (1996). Again, the Academy is likely to go for scores with strong melodic work over scores with innovative textures. Howard Shore's work in The Silence of the Lambs is dominated by moods and textures, surging from the darker regions of the orchestra and often serving more as sound design within the film. Reviewers raved about how incredible Anthony Hopkins' entrance is - he commands the screen without moving a muscle. This ignores the fact that all the elements of the production have been working in concert to create the introduction of the character. Kristi Zea has step by step been taking Clarice and the audience into the more and more hellish environs of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Tak Fujimoto has aligned our viewpoint strongly with Clarice, tracking down the hallway with leftward glances to the inmates in their cells, and Howard Shore's gloomy orchestrations create the perfect stage for Anthony Hopkins' terrific performance.

Of course, looking at the nominees for that year - I won't regurgitate the information, which can be found here - I am hard pressed to say which ones I would bump from the list to make way for The Silence of the Lambs, however this film is truly superbly made in every aspect, and should have been given more recognition at the time.

Addendum: A reader has informed me that Dances With Wolves won the Oscar for cinematography the year before The Silence of the Lambs, and also won everything else it was up for, including Best Picture. Absolutely correct of course - in an article that had me hunting down imdb entries for spelling, this was the one factoid that I stupidly relied on memory for. Only I could recall that Wolves won the cinematography award, but forget that it took out Best Picture! The oversight is even more remarkable when you consider the fact that I did play a little Sophie's Choice game of seeing which of the nominees I would drop without realising. Some "expert"!