Hannibal

Hannibal is a 2001 thriller film directed by Ridley Scott, adapted from the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. Set ten years after The Silence of the Lambs, the premise is that one of Hannibal Lecter’s surviving victims, the extremely wealthy Mason Verger, is determined to capture, torture, and kill him. The film’s locations alternate between Italy and the United States.

• Director : Ridley Scott
• Release Date : 13 April 2001
• Genre : Crime | Thriller
• Tagline : Break The Silence
• Runtime : 131 min

Cast

• Anthony Hopkins : Hannibal Lecter
• Julianne Moore : Clarice Starling
• Gary Oldman : Mason Verger
• Ray Liotta : Paul Krendler
• Frankie Faison : Nurse Barney

Official Sites :-

• Videoguide Company Limited [ru] (russian]
• Universal
• MGM Studios [us]
• MGMawards.com [us] reviews

The film takes place ten years after the events depicted in The Silence of the Lambs. FBI Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) is disgraced after a botched drug raid resulting in the deaths of five people, including HIV-positive drug dealer Evelda Drumgo (Hazelle Goodman), who was shot by Starling while holding a baby — and threatening Starling with a machine pistol. Though Starling had tried to abort the raid before a violent situation developed, another officer charged ahead and precipitated the gun battle with Drumgo and her bodyguards, and Starling is unjustly given the blame for the mess by Justice Department official Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta), whose romantic advances Starling had rejected years earlier.

As a result of the publicity surrounding the drug raid, Starling and her past connection to escaped serial killer Hannibal Lecter come to the attention of one of Lecter’s victims, Mason Verger, the heir to a meatpacking fortune. Verger, who was horrifically mutilated and paralyzed by his encounter with Lecter, still seeks revenge for what occurred. He uses his political influence to have Starling assigned to the Lecter case once again in the hope that this will draw Lecter out of hiding.

Verger claims to have new information about Lecter (an X-ray) which he is willing to disclose only to Starling, and she is sent to his estate to collect it and interview him. Upon her arrival, Verger tells Starling about his history with Lecter. They met when Lecter was assigned by a court as Verger’s therapist after Verger’s conviction on multiple counts of child molestation. Verger, the only one of Lecter’s victims to survive, is now bedridden and confined to his secluded mansion, but with the assistance of his personal physician Cordell Doemling and other minions he is pursuing an elaborate scheme to capture, torture and kill Lecter. Read more

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Hannibal Trivia

• When Jodie Foster declined to reprise the role of Clarice Starling, Julianne Moore beat Gillian Anderson, Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Winona Ryder and Helen Hunt for the role. Anderson fell out of the running early on when it was discovered her contract to _”X-Files, The” (1993)_ prohibited her from playing another FBI agent.
• After Thomas Harris finished writing the novel, he sent copies to The Silence of the Lambs (1991) principals Jonathan Demme, Jodie Foster, Ted Tally, and Anthony Hopkins for approval. The screenplay was rewritten no less than 15 times because of dissatisfaction by Demme and Foster over new character elements. In the end, neither Demme nor Foster remained with the production.
• Mason’s mansion is actually the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
• Krendler’s lake house with the boat dock is the same house used in the What About Bob? (1991)
• The outdoor opera, Dante’s “La vita nuova”, which Dr. Lecter and Mr. Pazzi see in Florence, was especially composed for the movie. Composer Patrick Cassidy did not stop at the three minute part as performed in the movie, but composed an entire opera.
• Some of the places where the movie was filmed include places where filming hardly ever is allowed. Author Thomas Harris, while doing research for his book, got in contact with the heir of the Palazzo Capponi. For the movie this same heir allowed Ridley Scott to film the Capponi Library.
• The first shot of Florence after the movie starts is the same scene as depicted in the drawing on Hannibal’s cell wall Hannibal describes to Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – the Duomo, as seen from the Belvedere, in Florence, Italy.
• Dr. Lecter’s Florentine alias, Dr. Fell, is taken from a rhyming epigram by 17th century English satirist Thomas Brown: “I do not love thee, Dr. Fell; The reason why I cannot tell. But this alone I know full well: I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.” The alias is also a reference to the “Silence of the Lambs” book where Jame Gumb, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, lived in Fell Street.
• The music during the opening credits is “Aria da Capo” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a tape of which was playing while Lecter killed the two guards in Tennessee in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
• Veteran character actor Frankie Faison has appeared in all four of the “Hannibal” movies. He played Lieutenant Fisk in Manhunter (1986) and played Barney the asylum orderly in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002).
• Giancarlo Giannini (Inspector Pazzi) was in the film Cervellini fritti impanati (1996), which translates as “Fried Crumbed Brains”.
• A poster can be seen near a newsstand for Gladiator (2000), also directed by Ridley Scott.
• There is a vegetarian cookbook on top of the fridge in the “dinner scene” toward the end of the movie. It’s visible when Hannibal pushes Clarice against the fridge.
• In Florence, where part of the movie was shot, it is possible to buy a sort of tourist guide called: “Hannibal Lecter. Visit the places of the city where he was.”
• In the opening credits of the film you can make out the face of Anthony Hopkins being formed by pigeons until the end of the credits when you can clearly see his face.
• Actual North Carolina State Troopers were used for the filming. They can be seen both in the search of the Verger home and driving their cruisers.
• Hannibal asks Pazzi about being demoted from the Il Mostro case. Il Mostro was a serial killer about whom Hannibal gives clues to Pazzi. This was a subplot that was filmed but never used as it was thought to be too complicated.
• This film was publicized as having the highest body count in a movie

Hannibal Mistake

• When Clarice is opening the letter written to her by Hannibal, it is sealed with wax, and not glued down in any way. While she’s reading it, Hannibal is shown licking an envelope.
• When Clarice is reading the letter from Hannibal, he does a voice over thing, however, what he says differs from what the letter says..specifically the “your good friend” before the signature, which Hannibal says but isn’t in the letter.
• At the end of the film, Ray Liotta wouldn’t be able to raise his eyebrows as the frontalis muscle had been divided.
• During the scene in which Krendler shows the fake Lecter postcard, look closely and you can read the line: “Sounds like him to me” although this line is part of Krendler’s speech, and not part of the message itself. Forgetting your lines, Mr. Liotta?
• Near the beginning of the film while Clarice is being interviewed, we can see a black T-shape during a shot of the floor. This is shown to be an actor’s mark, as someone steps right into it a few shots later.
• In the flashback seen where Dr. Lecter suggests to Mason Verger peel off his own face, Dr.Lecter picks up the broken mirror piece with a navy or black cloth. Then in the next scene, when he hands it to Mason, there is no cloth. Then, when Mason starts to scrape away at his face, the cloth reappears in Mason’s hand.
• Dr. Lecter signs M.D. with small letters, but when Clarice is reading it, the letters are much bigger. Also, he originally only does a line across the top of “Lecter”, but when she gets the letter it’s across his whole name. There’s also a hyphen between Hannibal Lecter and M.D. in the received version, but not when he sends it. Note: This is nothing to do with the re-mailing service – all they did was send the letter to a different location, not re-write it.
• When Francesco is on the pay phone, some of the same people walk past at least twice.
• In the scene where Pazzi meets with Lecter in the Capponi Library, at one point Lecter walks behind Pazzi while speaking and the white parts of his dark blue pajamas can actually be seen on top of Pazzi’s trench coat. This is because the two shots were in fact spliced together to account for the actor’s movements on screen as they spoke.
• The first time we hear Dr. Chilton’s tapes of Lecter’s conversations with Starling, Hannibal’s exact words are, Agent Starling is a deep roller, Barney. And yet, later in the movie we hear Clarice listen to the same conversation once more only this time he leaves out the name Barney after his question. This is infact an entirely different soundbyte, but it is supposed to be the same tape.

Hannibal Quotes

• Hannibal excelled as a tactician. No battle in history is a finer sample of tactics than Cannae. But he was yet greater in logistics and strategy. No captain ever marched to and fro among so many armies of troops superior to his own numbers and material as fearlessly and skillfully as he. No man ever held his own so long or so ably against such odds. Constantly overmatched by better soldiers, led by generals always respectable, often of great ability, he yet defied all their efforts to drive him from Italy, for half a generation.
  Theodore Ayrault Dodge
• As to the transcendent military genius of Hannibal there cannot be two opinions. The man who for fifteen years could hold his ground in a hostile country against several powerful armies and a succession of able generals must have been a commander and a tactician of supreme capacity. In the use of strategies and ambuscades he certainly surpassed all other generals of antiquity. Wonderful as his achievements were, we must marvel the more when we take into account the grudging support he received from Carthage. As his veterans melted away, he had to organize fresh levies on the spot. We never hear of a mutiny in his army, composed though it was of North Africans, Iberians and Gauls. Again, all we know of him comes for the most part from hostile sources. The Romans feared and hated him so much that they could not do him justice. Livy speaks of his great qualities, but he adds that his vices were equally great, among which he singles out his more than Punic perfidy and an inhuman cruelty. For the first there would seem to be no further justification than that he was consummately skillful in the use of ambuscades. For the latter there is, we believe, no more ground than that at certain crises he acted in the general spirit of ancient warfare. Sometimes he contrasts most favorably with his enemy. No such brutality stains his name as that perpetrated by Claudius Nero on the vanquished Hasdrubal. Polybius merely says that he was accused of cruelty by the Romans and of avarice by the Carthaginians. He had indeed bitter enemies, and his life was one continuous struggle against destiny. For steadfastness of purpose, for organizing capacity and a mastery of military science he has perhaps never had an equal.
  Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911)
• You, Hannibal, know how to gain a victory; you do not know how to use it.
  Maharbal, commander of Hannibals’ Numidian cavalry

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