Hannibal Lecter
| Hannibal Tetralogy character | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon | |||
| Hannibal Lecter | |||
| Aliases | Lloyd Wyman Doctor Fell | ||
| Nicknames | The Chesapeake Ripper "Hannibal the Cannibal" |
Gender | Male |
| Race | Caucasian | ||
| Birth | 1933 | ||
| Relationships | Count Lecter (Father) Simonetta Visconti (Mother) Mischa Lecter (sister) Robert Lecter (Uncle) Lady Murasaki (aunt and later lover) Clarice Starling | ||
| Enemies | Vladis Grutas Inspector Pascal Popil Frederick Chilton Mason Verger | ||
| Respected Rivals | Will Graham Clarice Starling | ||
| M.O. | Organized serial murder, Cannibalism, Torture | ||
| Portrayed by: | Manhunter Brian Cox The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, & Red Dragon Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Rising Gaspard Ulliel, Aaron Thomas | ||
Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character appearing in four novels by author Thomas Harris and their film adaptations. Lecter (as portrayed by Sir Anthony Hopkins) is acknowledged by the American Film Institute to be the most memorable fictional villain in film history. [1], [2]
Lecter appears in all four books in the series and their film adaptations. The first book of the series being Red Dragon (published in 1981, however the film name was changed to Manhunter, but remade in 2002 under the book title). The sequel to Red Dragon is The Silence of the Lambs, which was published in 1988, but filmed with different actors than Manhunter in 1991. The next installment in the series was Hannibal, which was published in 1999, and filmed in 2001. The latest and last book of the series, called Hannibal Rising was published in 2006, and filmed with it bearing the same title. The Hannibal Rising film is set to be released on February 9, 2007.
In Harris' novels and their film adaptations, Lecter is a brilliant and cultured criminal psychiatrist turned cannibalistic psychopath. Being a resourceful serial killer and culinary artist, Lecter is more widely known by his less-than-desirable nickname "Hannibal the Cannibal", a publicity term given to him by tabloid newspaper National Tattler, during the time that he stood trial for his crimes.
Brian Cox was the first actor to portray Lecter, taking the role in Manhunter, but due to Cox declining the role of Lecter for the sequel, the actor was changed to Sir Anthony Hopkins for the filming of The Silence of the Lambs. Hopkins continued to portray Lecter in the following films (including the remake of Manhunter which was filmed under its original book title Red Dragon). However, Hopkins will not reprise his role in the upcoming film Hannibal Rising, in which a younger version of Hannibal Lecter will be portrayed by Gaspard Ulliel.
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."
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 suggested to be possible influences. In 1992, Harris also paid a visit to the ongoing trials of Pietro Pacciani, who was suspected of being the infamous serial killer who was nicknamed the "Monster of Florence". Parts of Pacciani's killing methods were used as reference for the novel Hannibal.
Biography
- The following account of the character's life is based strictly on information presented in the "Hannibal Rising" novel. The inconsistencies presented later in the canon were fabrications made by Lecter, simply to avoid capture or direct psychological profiling.[citation needed]
Early life
Hannibal Lecter, the eighth of his line to bear the name "Hannibal," was born in Lithuania in late 1932 or early 1933 to a wealthy aristocratic family. His father (so far unnamed) was a count, his title dating back to the tenth century. Among the noted members of his line was Hannibal the Grim (1365-1428), a warlord who helped to defeat the Teutonic Order at the Battle of Grunwald. His mother, Madame Simonetta Sforza, was a scion of two famous Milanese houses, the Sforza on one side and the Visconti on the other. The Visconti, one of the wealthiest families in Italy, ruled Milan for one hundred seventy years (1277-1447) until it fell to the Sforza, who ruled it for another eighty years (1450-1535). He had a younger sister named Mischa, born in the fall of 1939.
It has been suggested, with little evidence other than fragmentary family records, that Lecter was descended, presumably through his mother, from one Giuliano Bevisangue, a feared and ruthless figure in twelfth-century Tuscany, and from the Machiavelli bloodline in addition to the Visconti and Sforza. In the book Hannibal, Lecter himself would pursue this subject, to determine from the records of the Capponi Library if there was any true connection to Bevisangue, but he was unable to definitively answer the question. (the fictitious name Bevisangue is in fact a condensation in Italian of the verb bevere meaning "to drink," and the noun sangue meaning "blood," possibly meaning "Giuliano the Blood-Drinker." This may be Harris' subtle way of linking his character to the vampire tradition). Hannibal also asserted that Lecter was a cousin of the artist Balthus. This relationship was never touched on again, though it could be argued that Lecter's uncle, the fictitious painter Robert Lecter, exhibited many of the same traits as Balthus.
It quickly became apparent that Hannibal was marked from birth to be different; his left hand had a second middle finger next to the first, perfectly replicated. He was diagnosed with the rarest form of polydactyly, a congenital irregularity of the hands or feet, manifesting itself in the occurrence of extra fingers or toes. This condition can vary from an unnoticeable rudimentary finger or toe, to fully developed extra digits, as was the case with young Lecter. It was a condition he never bothered to correct until after his escape from custody, when such a distinctive feature would have quickly led to his recapture; by the resurfaced, he had only the normal five fingers on his left hand, the scar left behind on the back of the hand covered by cosmetics and a tanning agent (the film adaptations of Harris' novels make no mention of this phenomenon; whatever actor portrayed Lecter in a given film had the usual five fingers on his left hand).
In Red Dragon, Harris wrote that, as a child, Lecter showed his earliest sign of sociopathic behaviour: sadism towards animals. This early behavior doesn't fit seamlessly with his later characterization, which some fans are doubtful of his early mannerisms due to the inconsistency.[3] It should also be pointed out that to be diagnosed as a true sociopath, Lecter must exhibit all three characteristics from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual's checklist. Lecter is seen to only exhibit two: a lack of remorse and habitual deceitfulness. However, Harris also wrote in Red Dragon that Lecter did not really fit any existing psychological condition, so psychiatrists called him a sociopath for lack of another appropriate label. In Red Dragon, Will Graham (a forensic psychologist and Lecter's captor) says he believes Lecter is the way he is because of neurological disability, which would present a severe congenital deformity as well.
Transition to murder
In the winter of 1944-1945, when Lecter was twelve, his parents, governess, tutor, and family retainers died in the crossfire between a German Stuka Bomber and a Soviet T-34 tank. Shortly thereafter, the lodge which his family had used as shelter from the war became invaded by a group of former Lithuanian collaborators, now tuned looters. Lecter, his sister, and other local children were rounded up by the looters to be killed and used as food during the cold Baltic winter. Four year old Mischa was killed and cannibalized, but young Lecter escaped. It is believed that this event would shape the rest of Lecter's life; Harris writes that when they had taken Mischa from the barn, Lecter had prayed to God to see his sister alive again, but instead he witnessed the deserters decapitate her with an axe. This destroyed his faith in God, and he believed from then on that there was no real justice in the world. This event would later enable him to commit his first murders, acts of murder and even his first acts of cannibalism in order to avenge Mischa. Years later, he would come to see Clarice Starling as a surrogate for his beloved sister.
After the looters fled in their half-track, Hannibal wandered the forests until he was found by a single Soviet KV-1 tank. The soldiers cut the chain around his neck, but it came away with pieces of his skin, a scar that never truly healed.
The Soviets returned Lecter to his family's castle, which he had not seen in four years. In the wake of the German shelling it had been converted into a Soviet orphanage. Often these orphanages were filled with hundreds, even thousands, of eastern European children left parentless by the war, children whose lives were marked by hostile and traumatic events, and who were angry and ready to lash out at any who came near. Such men became bullies; Hannibal, surprisingly, did not, but he was most certainly violent. While living there, he frequently attacked and severely wounded many of his fellow orphans, but only those who bullied, hurt or insulted others. Clearly the leader of the long-gone group of looters, Vladis Grutas, continued to haunt his thoughts, for as he said to Grutas himself much later, "I put your face on every bully I ever hurt." The little children, on the other hand, he treated quite respectfully, often letting them tease him a little, letting them believe him to be a crazed deaf-mute. He even gave them the few treats he had or could find in the squalor of the orphanage.
A short time later, he was taken to France by his uncle, and the new Count, Robert Lecter, a famous artist. Hannibal developed a close relationship to his aunt and adoptive mother, the Lady Murasaki. At age 13, he attacked a local butcher, Paul Momund, in retaliation for an obscene insult to his aunt. In doing so, he attracted the attention of his first lawman, Inspector Popil. Popil intuitively grasped what Lecter had become and, when Momund subseqently became Lecter's first murder victim (Lecter slashed him twice in the stomach with a katana and then beheaded him), Popil pressed him to admit his guilt. Lecter proved impenetrable, however, even passing a lie-detector test.
In 1951, Lecter returned to Lithuania and the scene of his sister's murder. While examining the ground, he unearthed remains of Mischa, and the dog-tags of the group of deserters who had killed her. One member of the group, Enrikas Dortlich, now an officer in the Soviet Border Guards, arrived at the scene intent on killing Lecter. Lecter surprised and murdered him (decapitation), however, dispensing poetic justice by consuming him, his first willful act of cannibalism. Dortlich's cheeks were removed and eaten en brochette, grilled over the fire on a skewer in the classic French fashion, with wild morels, fungi prized in French cuisine.
Dortlich's murder put the group in alert; Grutas dispatched a second member of the group, Zigmas Milko, to eliminate the problem by either bribing Lecter or killing him. Lecter killed Milko instead, drowning him in formaldehyde. Grutas kidnapped Lady Murasaki and used her as a lure to draw Lecter to his death. Lecter, donning the tanto of his aunt's ancestor Date Masamune, tracked Grutas to his houseboat. In a final confrontation, Grutas revealed that Lecter too had consumed his sister in broth fed to him by the soldiers. Enraged, Lecter eviscerated him by repeatedly carving his sister's initial into his body, howling "M for Mischa" over and over. He tried to reassure Lady Murasaki that he loved her. "What is left in you to love?" she demanded, before fleeing him by diving into the Seine.
Popil arrested Lecter for the murders, but there was little incentive for a trial; no evidence could be conclusively tied to him, and all the victims had been slavers and war criminals. Lecter left France, killing the final member of the group, Bronys Grentz, while on a vacation in Montreal, before returning to his internship at Baltimore.
American career
Lecter's drawings led to an internship at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, where he graduated with a degree in medicine and eventually settled. Lecter established a psychiatric practice in Baltimore 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 and Chesapeake 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 nine pre-incarceration victims after he came into the United States are known by name in the books: Benjamin Raspail and Verger. Mason was the son of Molston Verger, a very wealthy and influential businessman who owned a meat-packing empire. Mason went through psychiatric counseling with Lecter as part of a court-order after being convicted of child molestation. Mason invited Lecter to his home in Owings Mills one night after a session. Lecter drugged Mason and suggested he try cutting off his own face with a mirror shard. Mason complied and, again at Lecter's suggestion, ate it and fed some to his Dobermans. Lecter then broke Mason's neck with a rope used for auto-erotic asphyxiation and left him to die. Later, the dogs were taken to an animal shelter to have their stomachs pumped which led to the retrieval of Mason's nose, lips and parts of his forehead, however, the skin graft was unsuccessful. Verger survived, but was left hideously disfigured and forever confined to a life support machine.
Raspail was Lecter's ninth and final (known) victim in the Chesapeake series 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 may have been killed by Buffalo Bill in the film version of Silence of the Lambs, which Lecter seemed to suggest, 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.
Incarceration
Lecter was caught in March or April 1975 by FBI Special Investigator Will Graham. Graham was investigating a series of cannibalistic murders in the Baltimore area committed by a serial killer, and had been corresponding with 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 Wound Man, an illustration used in many early medical books. Graham left to call the police, but Lecter crept up from behind and stabbed him with a stiletto, nearly disembowling him. Graham mangaged to shoot Lecter several times during the struggle, and both were rushed to the hospital, Lecter being apprehended after his recovery.
The courts found Lecter insane. Thus, he was spared prison and sent to the Chesapeake State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, under administrator Frederick Chilton. (The second book in the series changes the name to Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for reasons unknown). 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 Chilton, even though the author stated that Lecter doesn't fit seamlessly into any specific mental diagnosis.
Lecter, while in custody, was said to be "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, he could easily come up with the typical answers that would brand him as not being psychologically disturbed, and he also mocked the psychiatrists' attempts to profile him by folding their tests into origami. Much to Chilton's disappointment, Lecter was never psychologically profiled simply because of his superior intellect and his ability to trick the tests. It was because of this that he remained one of the most frightening serial killer enigmas in custody.
Lecter was a model patient until the afternoon of July 8, 1976. After complaining of chest pains, he was taken to the infirmary. After his restraints were removed for his electrocardiogram (ECG) he attacked a nurse, tearing out an eye and dislocating her jaw. Chilton would later note that Lecter's pulse never went above 85 beats per minute "even when he ate her tongue." During the struggle with the orderlies, his shoulder was dislocated. Following the incident, Lecter was treated very carefully by the hospital staff, often outfitted with heavy restraints, a straitjacket and muzzle-like mask, and transported only 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. 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. It is also implied at the end of the novel and of the film adaptation that Lecter seeks revenge on Chilton for the mistreatment that he endured at Chesapeake. Moreover, On the second-last page of the novel (366), Harris writes:
"Next, he dropped a note to Dr. Frederick Chilton in federal protective custody, suggesting that he would be paying Dr. Chilton a visit in the near future. After this visit, he wrote, it would make sense for the hospital to tattoo feeding instructions on Chilton's forehead to save paperwork."
Aiding the FBI
During his stay in Baltimore State Hospital, Lecter would help with four FBI cases. Graham came out of retirement in 1978 to offer his insight on the "Tooth Fairy" case and upon arriving at a dead end, went to Lecter for help, as he had twice before after Dr. Lecter was in custody, but before Graham went into retirement. Lecter gave Graham some valuable insights into the Tooth Fairy, but upon learning about the case, secretly sent a coded message to the killer, Francis Dolarhyde, to kill Graham and his family (which would later result in Graham's permanent disfigurement). Five years later, Jack Crawford sent FBI trainee Clarice Starling to Lecter to administer a psychological questionnaire. Starling, initially assuming the assignment was related to her studies, ended up getting him to help the FBI in the Buffalo Bill case. In both of these cases, Lecter used wordplay and subtle clues to help Graham and Starling arrive at the conclusions themselves.
Lecter's relationship with Starling, around which The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal revolve, was part antagonism and part seduction. He saw in her tenacity and eagerness, in addition to an unseen power that fueled her motivation and drive into the FBI. Despite this, they quarreled routinely. Starling allowed Lecter into her mind in return for leads and information on Buffallo Bill, which Lecter found fascinating. Nevertheless, Lecter was not amused when Starling provided possibly the best psychoanalysis of him, observing:
"You see a lot, Dr. Lecter. I won’t deny anything you’ve said. But here’s the question you’re answering for me right now, whether you mean to or not: Are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? It’s hard to face. I’ve found that out in the last few minutes. How about it? Look at yourself and write down the truth. What more fit or complex subject could you find? Or maybe you’re afraid of yourself."
Buffallo Bill's last kidnappee would be Catherine Martin, daughter of Senator 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 "Billy Rubin" (Bilirubin is a pigment found in feces, the same color as Chilton's hair, Lecter's hint that the name was fake. The film adaptation 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 had, of course, murdered the position's previous occupant.
Winning Clarice
Lecter's identity would be discovered by Florence detective Rinaldo Pazzi seven years after his escape from Memphis. Lecter had been going by the false name Dr. Fell and 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 the vengful Mason Verger, Lecter's fourth victim who survived having his neck broken and his face peeled off by Lecter. The deal was to get Lecter alive so that Verger could exact his revenge by feeding Lecter to a group of specially trained boars. In his efforts to capture Lecter, Pazzi inadvertently informed Lecter of his plot to sell him to Mason Verger. After disemboweling and hanging Pazzi, Lecter returns 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 was rescued by Starling, who was sedated with two darts during the ensuing gun fight. Lecter carries her away from the boars and convinces Margot Verger (Mason's distraught sister and a former patient of Lecter; after having been raped by Mason) to kill her brother. Lecter left a voice message claiming responsibility for Verger's death. (In the film adaptation of Hannibal, Clarice is shot in the shoulder with a bullet instead of being shot by darts. Lecter also offers to spare the life of Verger's personal physician Cordell, on the condition that he kill Mason. Lecter, knowing Cordell's disdain of murder, offers to take the blame for his 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, she exposed her breast to Lecter and seduced him.
The couple then vanished. In 1993, Lecter's former caretaker, Barney Matthews, spotted the two in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is often misenterprated that Starling domesticates Lecter, quieting his violent impulses with sex, but it is stated on the last page of the novel that both Lecter and Starling were capable of murder at any time. Around the time of the millenium, Starling sent an emerald ring to her former roommate Ardelia Mapp.
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.
Traits and Abilities
In the books, Lecter has been described as short, but with noticeable wiry strength and dignity of bearing that makes him seem more physically able than his age presents. 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 (novel series only), the middle finger perfectly replicated, until he underwent surgery (in Rio de Janeiro) after his escape from custody to better mask his identity.
Lecter is a character who is portrayed to be intellectually brilliant (who lectures on Dante and plays the Goldberg Variations, purported to be Lecter’s favorite piece of music), but at the same time, primal in his mannerisms. His natural posture is rigid and still, but swift when required, and he tilts his head to one side when listening. He is also noted to have inhuman hearing, and more commonly noticed, an almost animalistic sense of smell (being able to smell tiny amounts of blood or semen from up to a few yards away). Other unique traits include a remarkable photographic memory, and in Hannibal Rising, it is mentioned by a psychiatrist that Lecter can have 'several trains of thought at once, without distraction from any' due to the hemispheres of his brain acting independently. His voice is described as having a metallic ring to it, as though he spoke with a perpetual tension. After plastic surgery (novel series only), 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. Lecter refrained from major alterations to his nose, because it would severly inhibit his incredible sense of smell.
His body count totals 21, 14 confirmed by the FBI, and four attempted murders. Chilton was the first victim after Lecter's escape; at the end of the film version of "Silence of the Lambs", Lecter is seen following a vacationing Chilton after phoning Starling to tell her he was "having an old friend for dinner". An Italian musician also vanished not long before Pazzi's murder. It is assumed, by Signora Pazzi's comment that "They sound a hundred percent better with the new viola player," that Lecter killed the old viola player to improve the sound of the orchestra, as he did with the flautist from the Baltimore Philharmonic.
His native tongue was Lithuanian but his travels allowed him to gain fluency in a variety of different languages including Italian, German, Russian, Polish, French, English and Spanish. He is also capable of passable Japanese. Even before the character's established backstory in Hannibal, both Brian Cox and Anthony Hopkins portrayed Hannibal with distinctly European accents. Cox spoke with an impeccable British accent, whereas Hopkins spoke in a hybrid of British and American. His accent is never described in the books.
Though it is mentioned in Red Dragon that Lecter as a child displayed sadism toward animals, this is not confirmed at all by any of his later appearances. In fact, quite the opposite is shown. Back when he lived in Lithuania, he had formed a strong friendship with a horse named Cesar and used non harmful methods to intimidate swans from attacking his sister. In Hannibal, he again displayed this affinity toward animals by staring down the boars Mason Verger had bred specifically for the task of killing him.
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."
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, that condition when referring to Lecter is considered to be very basic, because he doesn't display the typical characteristics of a true sociopath. It can also be noted that his murder style is not impulsive, and is perfectly able to choose to not kill and show compassion. Also, Lecter is not without compassion; he displays genuine affection toward Clarice Starling, mourns the loss of his dead sister Mischa, respects his caretaker named Barney Matthews, and shows honest concern for Margot Verger, when she is attempting to 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."
A large contribution to the appeal of Lecter as an anti-hero and even a role model is his sheer unfallability, this is a trait that appears in many heros and anti-heros, no matter what the circumstances, whether they be removing someones face with a shard of mirror or escaping a horde of man-eating pigs, Lecter is never out of his element. Also audiences may consider him to be more than a black and white killer due to the tragedies in his past. The fact that he is cultured and sophisticated may be seen as either grounds for making him seem more admirable or merely seen as qualifying him as amoral and therefore even more horrific.
Trivia
- Hannibal Lecter organizes his memories in an elaborate memory palace. In the novel Hannibal, author Thomas Harris exposits Dr. Lecter's unique intellect and memory as being the product of well-developed Ars Memoriae, or Memory Palace form of mnemonic discipline. The young Hannibal is taught this discipline by his tutor, Jakov, in Hannibal Rising. Exaggerating the potential of the memory palace by having Lecter read entire books and transcripts of interviews with patients, Thomas Harris also raised the fascinating, and possibly original proposition that the palace can be a dangerous place for its owner. In one scene Lecter retires to his palace in search of comfort only to become haunted by horrific memories he, or his subconcious mind has stored there in numerous oubliettes. He also uses it as a sanctuary; when he is being tortured with a cattle-prod, he enters his memory palace and lays his face against the coolness of a statue there.
- 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.
- Actor Robert Duvall was the first actor asked to portray Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Robert De Niro was asked to not only direct the movie, but portray Hannibal Lecter after the role had been turned down by Duvall. Both said that the character was too disturbing. Jonathan Demme (the project's new director) cast the lesser high-profile actor Anthony Hopkins, who was delighted and humored to take on the Hannibal Lecter role.
- The infamous slurping noise that Hannibal Lecter makes after he tells Clarice Starling about him eating the census taker's liver was never in the original script. Hopkins added the noise as a joke, and didn't think that director Jonathan Demme would keep it in the final cut. This quote also was also voted as the 21st most famous movie quote of all time by the American Film Institute.
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.
External links
- Information about Hannibal Lecter, with a strong central focus on Manhunter (1986)
- Manhunter (1986) at IMDb
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991) at IMDb
- Hannibal (2001) at IMDb
- Red Dragon (2002) at IMDb
- Hannibal Rising (2007) at IMDb
- Crime Library profile of Lecter
- Hannotations
- German fanpage with downloads
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