I’ve become a pretty big fan of Tony Zhou’s “Every Frame a Painting” video series on Vimeo and YouTube, and although I’m not as big a fan of The Silence of the Lambs as many are, I found his most recent installment on the film quite informative.
Entitled “Who Wins the Scene?“, the video examines the first meeting between Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 thriller, which won 5 Academy Awards including a trophy for both actors mentioned above. In the video, Zhou examines how camera angles, framing, and point-of-view lay out the scene to help the viewer determine who ultimately wins this first standoff between the young FBI cadet and the seasoned serial killer. Both enter the scene with a primary goal in mind, but only one can be the true winner in the end.
After watching this video, my thoughts immediately went to another serial killer procedural: David Fincher’s Zodiac. In a scene just over halfway through the film, officers Jack Mulanax (Elias Koteas), Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), and Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) interview possible murder suspect Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch) to try to build their case, with Allen set out to prove he isn’t their guy. As in the video on The Silence of the Lambs, the scene from Zodiac utilizes a combination of camera angles, framing, and points of view, each of which help us understand the mindsets of the characters and, ultimately, who exits the scene on top.
I would love to see a few more of these types of scenes examined in this nature. David Fincher’s Gone Girl immediately comes to mind, as several scenes that portray both Amy (Rosamund Pike) and Nick (Ben Affleck) garner a more in-depth examination of the power structure of their relationship. But I digress: I’ve included below both Zhou’s video on The Silence of the Lambs as well as the scene I mentioned from Zodiac so you can take some of what Zhou says in the first video and apply it to a scene in a different film to even better understand what he’s talking about.
