Hannibal Lecter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character appearing in four novels by author Thomas Harris and their film adaptations. He is generally renowned as one of the most fearsome movie villains ever depicted. [1], [2]
Lecter appears in Red Dragon (published in 1981, filmed in 1986 as Manhunter and in 2002 under its original title), The Silence of the Lambs (published in 1988, filmed in 1991), Hannibal (published in 1999, filmed in 2001) and Hannibal Rising (to be published in 2006, and filmed as Hannibal Rising and set to be released in 2007).
In Harris' novels and their film adaptations, Lecter is an ingenious, cultured psychiatrist and resourceful serial killer, who practices cannibalism upon his victims.
Brian Cox was the first actor to play the character, taking the role in Manhunter, but most moviegoers recognize Sir Anthony Hopkins as Lecter. Hopkins first appeared in the role in The Silence of the Lambs, winning the Academy Award for his highly praised performance. He also appeared as Lecter in Hannibal and Red Dragon. Gaspard Ulliel will portray a younger Lecter in Hannibal Rising.
Harris, who rarely gives interviews, has never definitively explained his influences for creating Lecter, but real-life cannibalistic murderers such as Albert Fish and Issei Sagawa have been mentioned by fans as possible influences. In 1992, Harris also paid a visit to the ongoing trials of Pietro Pacciani, who was suspected of being the infamous "Monster of Florence"; parts of that story were incorporated into the novel Hannibal. In a commentary on The Criterion Collection DVD version of The Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins claims the villainous computer HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as one inspiration for his interpretation of the character. Cox stated on the Manhunter DVD interview that his main inspiration for playing Lecter was Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel, who, according to Cox, "didn't have a sense of right or wrong."
In 2003, the American Film Institute named Lecter, as played by Hopkins, the number one film villain of all time.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
- The following account of the character's life is an interpretation of the novels by Thomas Harris, rather than any films or screenplays.
[edit] Early life and murder spree.
Hannibal Lecter was born in Lithuania in 1938 to a wealthy aristocratic family. His father was a count and his mother a descendant of the famous Visconti family of Milan. In Hannibal he is said to be a cousin of the artist Balthus. He had a younger sister named Mischa.
When Lecter was six, a group of German deserters retreating from Russia shelled his family's estate, killing his parents and most of the servants. Lecter, his sister, and other local children were rounded up by the group of deserters to be used as sustenance during the cold Baltic winter. Mischa was killed and eaten, but young Lecter managed to escape. It is believed that this event would shape the rest of Lecter's life; Harris writes that it destroyed his faith in God, and he believed from then on that there was no real justice in the world. Years later, he would come to see Clarice Starling as a surrogate for his sister.
In Red Dragon, Harris wrote that, as a child, Lecter showed the first and earliest sign of sociopathic behaviour: sadism towards animals. As this doesn't appear to fit completely seamlessly with his later characterization, some fans are troubled by the inconsistency.[3] It should also be pointed out that to be diagnosed as a true sociopath, Lecter must fulfill at least one other requirement from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual's checklist; he shows only two, a lack of remorse and habitual deceitfulness. However, Harris also wrote in Red Dragon that Lecter did not really fit any existing psychological profile, so psychiatrists called him a sociopath for lack of another appropriate label. In Red Dragon, Will Graham (a forensic psychologist) says he believes Lecter is the way he is because of neurological debility, and likens the way his mind works to congenital physical deformity.
Lecter established a psychiatric practice in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1970s. He became a leading figure in Baltimore society and indulged his extravagant tastes, which he financed by influencing some of his patients to bequeath him large sums of money in their wills. He became world-renowned as a brilliant psychiatrist, but he himself apparently had nothing but disdain for psychology; he would later criticize it as "puerile" and "on level with phrenology," and comment that most psychology departments were filled with "ham radio enthusiasts and other personality-deficient buffs."
Lecter killed at least nine people before his capture, becoming known in the Baltimore area as "The Chesapeake Ripper". Only three of his victims survived, including Graham, an FBI profiler who was Lecter's captor and who figures largely in the plot of Red Dragon. Another one of these, Mason Verger, figures largely in the plot of Hannibal.
Only two of his 9 victims are known by name in the books: Benjamin Raspail and Mason Verger. Verger was the son of a very wealthy and influential family who controlled a meat-packing empire. Verger went through psychiatric counseling with Lecter after being convicted of child molestation. Lecter drugged Verger and suggested he try cutting off his own face. Verger complied and, again at Lecter's suggestion, ate it and then was convinced that he fed it to the dogs, so that pieces could not be found when their stomachs were pumped. Lecter then broke Verger's neck and left him to die. Verger survived, but was left hideously disfigured and forever confined to a life support machine.
Raspail was Lecter's ninth and final (known) victim before his incarceration. Raspail was a not-so-talented flautist with the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra, and it is believed that Lecter killed Raspail because his musicianship, or lack thereof, spoiled his enjoyment of the orchestra's concerts. Raspail's body would be discovered sitting in a church pew with his thymus and pancreas missing, and his heart pierced. It is believed Lecter served these organs at a dinner party he held for the orchestra's board of directors. Raspail claimed to have killed a man whose head was found years later in Raspail's rented storage garage in Baltimore, but Lecter suspected him of covering up for his former lover, Jame Gumb, who would later be involved in Lecter's life as the serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill". (Raspail's role in the film versions has been inconsistent; he was killed by Buffalo Bill in the film version of Silence of the Lambs, but by Lecter in the adaptations of Hannibal and Red Dragon. The inconsistency has never been explained.)
The novels also mention a few details about Lecter's other victims. One, who initially survived, was taken to a private mental hospital in Denver, Colorado. Others include a bow hunter, a census taker whose liver he famously ate with "fava beans and a big Amarone" (in the movie, the wine he had for this particular meal was "a nice Chianti"), and a Princeton student whom he buried. Lecter was given sodium amytal by the FBI in the hopes of learning where he buried the student; he gave them a recipe for potato chip dip. He committed his last three known murders within nine days.
Lecter was caught in March or April of 1975 by FBI Special Investigator Will Graham. Graham was investigating a series of murders in the Baltimore area committed by a serial killer, and had turned to Lecter for professional advice. When Graham questioned Lecter at his psychiatric practice, he noticed some antique medical books in his office. Upon seeing these, Graham knew Lecter was the killer he sought; the sixth victim had been killed in his workshop and laced to a pegboard in a manner reminiscent of the Wound Man, an illustration used in many early medical books. Graham left to call the police, but while he was on the phone Lecter attacked him with a linoleum knife and nearly disemboweled him.
The courts found Lecter insane. Thus, he was spared prison and sent to the Baltimore State Forensic Hospital (later the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.) Many of the families of his victims pursued lawsuits against Lecter to have their files destroyed. The FBI investigated four more patients who had died under Lecter's care. He was nicknamed "Hannibal the Cannibal" in the National Tattler, a tabloid that also published unauthorized photos of Graham in the hospital after being attacked by Lecter. Another officer retired from the FBI after being the first to discover Lecter's basement. Lecter's electroencephalogram (EEG) showed a bizarre pattern and, given his history, was ultimately branded "a pure sociopath" by the hospital's administrator, Frederick Chilton (who was not a certified doctor). Ultimately, Lecter remained an enigma; he was far "too sophisticated" for most forms of psychological evaluation, especially as he enjoyed staying abreast of all of the latest developments in his field. Since he knew how the tests worked, no one could use them on him.
Lecter was a model patient until the afternoon of July 8, 1981. Upon complaining of chest pains, he was taken to the infirmary where his restraints were removed. He attacked a nurse who was then placing leads for an electrocardiogram (ECG) onto his chest, tore out her eye, dislocated her jaw and ate her tongue. His pulse never went above 85 beats per minute. During the struggle with the orderlies, his shoulder was dislocated. Following the incident, Lecter was treated very carefully by the hospital staff. He was often confined to heavy restraints, a straitjacket and muzzle, and he was only transported when strapped to a hand-truck.
Chilton and Lecter's relationship was marked by mutual hatred; Chilton's mediocrity and inflated self-importance offended Lecter, who often humiliated his keeper, while Lecter's constant mind games and slipperiness infuriated Chilton, who punished him by removing his books and toilet seat. (Chilton once claimed Lecter saw him as his nemesis; this was clearly a case of projection.) At the end of Red Dragon, Lecter diagnosed this form of punishment as indicative of the damnation of society by half-measures: "Any rational society would kill me, or give me my books." By contrast, Lecter reached a mutual respect with his primary caregiver and warden, Barney Matthews, and the two often shared thoughts over Barney's correspondence courses. During the investigation of Buffalo Bill, the two would also discuss Clarice Starling.
[edit] Helping the FBI
During his stay in the hospital, Lecter would help with four FBI cases. Graham came out of retirement in 1978 to help out with the "Tooth Fairy" case and, while at a dead end, he went to Lecter for help, as he had twice before after Dr. Lecter was in custody, but before Graham went into retirement. Lecter "helped" by giving Graham a profile on the Tooth Fairy, but after helping turn the tables on Graham. Feeling Graham is responsible for his imprisonment, he turns the tables by sending a coded message to the killer, Francis Dolarhyde, to kill Graham and his family (which would later result in Graham being permanently disfigured). Five years later, Jack Crawford sent FBI trainee Clarice Starling to Lecter. Starling thought she was there for a class assignment, hoping to get Lecter to take a questionnaire, but she ended up getting him to help her in the Buffalo Bill case. In both of these cases, Lecter used word play and subtle clues to help Graham and Starling figure it out themselves.
Lecter was not amused when Starling provided possibly the best psychoanalysis of him, observing:
"You see a lot, doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don't you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you're afraid to."
Lecter's relationship with Starling, around which The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal revolve, was part antagonism and part seduction. Harris based the Lecter-Starling relationship on the "consultations" between profiler Robert Keppel and serial killer Ted Bundy, in which Bundy offered to help Keppel track down the Green River serial killer. Interestingly enough, Bundy is known to have owned a copy of Red Dragon while on death row in Starke, Florida. In his book Obsession, profiler John Douglas suggests that Bundy's contacting Keppel was inspired by the Lecter-Graham relationship described in Red Dragon.
Gumb's last kidnappee was Catherine Martin, daughter of Sen. Ruth Martin. Lecter told Chilton he would reveal Buffalo Bill's real name to Martin and was promptly flown to Memphis, Tennessee, and held at the Shelby County Courthouse. During his stay in Memphis, Lecter lied to Martin, giving her the fake name "William Rubin," or "Bill Rubin" (Bilirubin is a pigment found in feces, the same color as Chilton's hair, Lecter's hint that the name was fake.) The movie changed the name to "Louis Friend," an anagram for "iron sulfide" - fool's gold.) Starling then visited Lecter at his makeshift cell, and he gave her some final clues before making a bloody escape, killing two police officers during the ordeal. He escaped by making a "mask" from the face of one of the officers, donning the officer's uniform and pretending to be his own still-living victim so that he would be hurried away by ambulance while the authorities still hunted for him.
After plastic surgery and the removal of a distinctive sixth finger, Lecter relocated in Florence, Italy. Lecter avoided reconstruction of his nose to protect his uncanny perception of fragrances. In Florence, he took the pseudonym "Dr. Fell," a reference to the Tom Brown translation of Martial's epigram "Non amo te, Sabidi" ("I do not love thee, Doctor Fell / The reason why, I cannot tell.") As Dr. Fell, Lecter's dazzling charm won him the recently vacated position of museum curator. Lecter murdered the previous curator.
[edit] Winning Clarice
Lecter's identity would be discovered by Florence detective Rinaldo Pazzi seven years after his escape from Memphis. Pazzi, who had been disgraced when he bungled the "Il Mostro" case, saw a chance for redemption when he realized Dr. Fell's true identity. Pazzi struck a deal with Verger to get Lecter alive so that Verger could feed Lecter to wild boars. In his efforts to capture Lecter, Pazzi inadvertently informed Lecter of his insight. After disemboweling and hanging Pazzi, Lecter went back to the United States. Both Verger and Starling would hunt him, hoping to get to him before the other. Lecter ended up being captured by Verger's men, but escaped once again, taking the wounded Starling with him and convincing Margot Verger (Mason's sister and a former patient, whom Mason had raped as a teenager) to kill her brother. Lecter left a voice message claiming responsibility for Verger's death. (In the film adaptation of Hannibal, Lecter offers to spare the life of Verger's butler/caretaker on the condition that he kill Mason and even offers to take the blame for the butler/caretaker's crime.)
Lecter kept Starling in total isolation during the next few months, subjecting her to various conditioning techniques ("brainwashing"). His main goal was to systematically replace Starling's memories and personality and make her believe she was Lecter's deceased sister Mischa. After breaking Starling down, Lecter kidnapped her nemesis, Paul Krendler, who was trying to discredit her, as a final test. At the rented home that Lecter was living in, Lecter performed a craniotomy on a drugged Krendler and tastefully prepared and shared his brains with Starling and Krendler himself while Krendler was still alive.
However, Lecter's plan to brainwash Starling ultimately failed, as he utterly underestimated her strong will; Starling refused to have her own personality sublimated, mocking his efforts to turn her into his sister. Then, in the novel's most controversial moment, she exposed her breasts to Lecter and seduces Lecter into becoming her lover.
The couple then vanished. Lecter's former caretaker, Barney Matthews, spotted the two in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2000. It is stated that Starling was able to use sex to tame Lecter's darker impulses and literally domesticate the serial killer, with the two living together with an affluent lifestyle in Buenos Aires.
The ending of Hannibal sparked much controversy. Harris wrote an alternate ending for the film adaptation: in the new ending, Lecter didn't try to brainwash Starling, and the infamous dinner party where Krendler's brain was served took place days, not months, after the death of Mason Verger. The police tracked Lecter down, and, in order to buy time, Starling handcuffed herself to Lecter. In the film's climax, Lecter grabbed a meat cleaver and prepared to chop off Starling's hand to escape. She was defiant, so Lecter tested her: he asked her to beg him to turn himself in to the police and renounce his murderous ways. Starling refused, and Lecter thanked her for not disappointing him; he then chopped off his own hand so he could escape. The film ended with a scene from the middle part of the novel, where Lecter was on a plane and gave some food from his Dean & Deluca travel pack to a child sitting next to him. While the novel made it clear that Lecter gave the child liverwurst, the film heavily implied it was left-overs from Krendler's brain. At the end of the film, Hannibal Lecter is still alive and at large.
[edit] Appearance
In the books, Lecter has been described as short, but with noticeable wiry strength and dignity of bearing that makes him seem taller. He had maroon colored eyes that reflected light and even rows of small white teeth. His "most ardent fan," Francis Dolarhyde, remarks that he is "the dark portrait of a Renaissance prince". In The Silence of the Lambs, he is mentioned to have a widow's peak, and dark hair. He had six fingers on his left hand, the middle finger perfectly replicated, until he underwent a surgery to better mask his identity.
He tends to be very still, yet very quick when required, and tilts his head to one side when listening. He has excellent hearing and smell. His voice is described as having a metallic ring to it, as though he spoke with a perpetual tension. After plastic surgery, he has different hair and a minor alteration to his nose and cheeks. At the end of Hannibal, when he is spotted with Starling by his former orderly Barney, he has had his face altered again.
His body count totals 21, 14 confirmed by the FBI, and four attempted murders. It is unknown whether he killed Chilton, although he went missing soon after Lecter's escape. An Italian musician also vanished not long before Pazzi's murder.
[edit] Lecter as a cultural figure
While Harris' novels Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs were critically and commercially successful, it was not until the film adaptation of the latter was released in 1991 that Lecter, as played by Anthony Hopkins, became a cultural icon. In many ways, the character became the template for cinematic portrayals of serial killers from that point on as cold, calculating master criminals who live to play "cat and mouse" with the police, manipulating both their victims and the detectives who "hunt" them like pawns in a game of chess. Many real-life serial killers, such as Andrei Chikatilo, BTK, Robert Mawdsley, and Jeffrey Dahmer have been compared to Lecter. His relationship with Starling set a precedent for the relationships between fictional murderers and police officers; it has by now become almost cliché for onscreen detectives to have "special relationships" with serial killers based on grudging respect and mutual obsession, and for police to consult with them in their cases in order to "think like their prey." Many law enforcement officers who have investigated serial killers have complained that Lecter is an inaccurate, romanticized caricature of an especially brutal kind of criminal, and that the "genius" with which he is portrayed committing sadistic, coldblooded murder, often getting away with it, glorifies and trivializes violence and the pain it causes.
He has been the inspiration behind many subsequent villainous characters, primarily because he represents an unusually horrific brand of serial killer; while most real-life serial killers suffer from severe psychological difficulties which often impede their sociability and their capability to relate to other people (as exemplified by Francis Dolarhyde from Red Dragon), Lecter fits in among an extremely limited range of sociopath: one who appears on the surface to be completely normal, or perhaps even brilliant; and who just happens to have a penchant for gruesome murder.
Indeed, Lecter's refined, aristocratic charm has made him something of a romantic figure, and his relationship with Starling has drawn many comparisons with the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. While portrayed as a sociopath, Lecter is not without compassion; he feels genuine concern and affection for Starling, mourns the loss of his dead sister, Mischa, respects his caretaker, Barney Matthews, and truly wants to help Margot Verger overcome her brother's abuse. In this sense, he has evolved from a villain into an antihero for whom audiences cheer. Red Dragon director Brett Ratner called him "the Huggy Bear of serial killers."
His line "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti" from Silence of the Lambs was voted as the 21st most famous movie quote of all time by the American Film Institute. The slurping sound he makes right after this line has also become a widely recognized, imitated, and parodied staple of pop culture.
[edit] Related References
- Aestheticization of violence
- AFI's 100 Greatest Heros and Villains
- The Online Film Critics Society Names the Greatest Screen Villain Of All Time: Darth Vader from Star Wars Lecter is ranked second.
[edit] External links
- Extensive information about the Lecter films, with central focus on Manhunter (1986)
- Manhunter (1986) at the Internet Movie Database
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991) at the Internet Movie Database
- Hannibal (2001) at the Internet Movie Database
- Red Dragon (2002) at the Internet Movie Database
- Crime Library profile of Lecter
- Hannotations
- German fanpage with downloads
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The Hannibal Tetralogy |
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The Books Red Dragon | The Silence of the Lambs | Hannibal | Hannibal Rising The Films Manhunter | The Silence of the Lambs | Hannibal | Red Dragon |
Main Characters Secondary Characters |
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Other |
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| Horror Icons In Film | |
|---|---|
| Classic: | The Creature | Dracula | Frankenstein's monster | The Invisible Man The Mummy | Count Orlok | The Phantom | The Wolf Man |
| Modern: | Norman Bates | Chucky | Ghostface | Jigsaw | Freddy Krueger | Leatherface | Hannibal Lecter | Michael Myers | Pinhead | Jason Voorhees | |
Categories: Hannibal | Fictional cannibals | Fictional evil geniuses | Fictional orphans | Fictional psychiatrists | Fictional sociopaths | Fictional serial killers | Fictional sadists | Film villains | Literature protagonists | Literature villains | Fictional victims of abuse | Fictional anti-heroes | 1981 introductions
