Good Movie/ Bad Movie: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane/ Hannibal

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

1976 was maybe the most important year in the career of Jodie Foster. She starred in family-friendly movies like “Freaky Friday” and Bugsy Malone, but also moved a big step forward into her adult career with her participation in “Taxi Driver” and the titular movie, all that in the age of thirteen/ fourteen. Sa y what you want, that’s pretty impressive. I can’t remember anything alike when I think of Spears, Cyrus or Olsen- Twins. There are actually different roles played by former child stars which can be considered as an attempt to show how adult they are now, but the only example I can now remember is the “Poison Ivy” series which starred at first Drew Barrymore and later Alissa Milano each as seductive Teenager girls.



The movie centers on the girl from the title. Her name is Rynn and lives apparently alone in the big house. From the first picture of the ocean an atmosphere of suspense is building. It is very clear from the very beginning, that Rynn is alone. Later she explains to her new and only friend Mariio what happened to her parents and why she is living alone. And even when I tell you now, that there are four dead people in this movie it doesn’t change the atmosphere. The acting and the directing of this little piece of gold is just perfect.

Two die on screen; the other two are already dead when the movie begins.

1. After the father of prepared everything for his daughter to make her a live on her own possible he attempted suicide, because he was suffering a deadly illness. He did this in the ocean, so that his body would never be found.
2. Her mother, who was abusive towards her daughter, later found Rynn and was killed accidently by the latter, because the father told her to offer her mother a drink with a special powder, which he claimed a sedative, but in fact was cyanide.
3. The landlady wanted to get something out of the cellar when Rynn wasn’t there. Due this action she discovered the dead body of the mother, stumbled in horror at the stairs and broke her neck.
4. Frank, the pedophile son of the landlady, discovers the secrets of Rynn and blackmails her into starting a relationship with him. She offers him a tea and while she prepares it in the kitchen, she puts something of the powder in her own cup. Back in the living room, Frank is suspicious and switches the cups.

After the cup-scene the film ends. It is left uncertain if Rynn had foresaw Franks suspicions or if she just goes with how the situation resolves.

The last thing you see is her face looking at Frank and the last thing you hear are Franks dying words how beautiful her hair is. Big credit has to be given to Martin Sheen, who plays Frank very intensive and spooky. The word pedophile is actually never spoken out loud, but from the very beginning you know what he is up to. In my humble opinion he is much scarier than all other movie monsters, even scarier than the following Hannibal. Dr. Lector is made up, when you are leaving the cinema after a movie with him, you know that the probability to meet somebody like him is not that big. Somebody like Frank could yet be in everybody’s neighborhood.




Hannibal

Another very impressive movie with the great Miss Foster was “The Silence of the Lambs”, for that she received her second Oscar. And not only she has, this movie belongs to the sole three productions which received the TOP FIVE Oscars (Screenplay, Director, Picture itself, Male Lead, Female Lead). The other two are “One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “It happened one Night”. To repeat this incredible success on purpose is just impossible. But when Hollywood smells the sweet scent of easy money, it can’t resist. Namely Dino De Laurentiis, the producer of this excuse for a motion picture. He owns the rights for the name Hannibal Lector, but passed to produce the last movie. He is also to blame to expand the one in a time success to a Movie Series. A similar failure happened to “The Matrix”.

I could blame Ridley Scott or Dino De Laurentiis for this piece of garbage, but the very truth is, that the original novel is just bad and contrived. Thomas Harris just wrote shit. Jonathan Demme, the director of “The Silence of the Lambs” passed to direct this movie, because he couldn’t argue with Harris to change the plot in his tendency to be lurid and full of gore. Foster also turned it down, officially for disagreement over the budget. She probably was the opinion, that when she stars in a movie like this she deserved some smart money. De Laurentiis wasn’t the same opinion, showed some Italian macho behavior and the role of Clarice Starling was recast with Julianne Moore.

The movie in its essence is a chase movie. Everybody is after Lector, who had a great time in Italy. To make him the center of the story is just wrong. Hannibal Lector is a supporting character, a fascinating secondary threat that brings an additional color to the picture. A main mistake here is, that they try to let Hannibal the cannibal look like an friendly old man who is just in his retirement and only kills those who deserved it.

Bullshit. He is a serial killer with an attitude who does whatever he wants to. That makes him a fascinating character. Don’t try to make him relatable.

I don’t even dignify those two lost hours of my live to recap its plot, also because there is no plot and no murder mystery. It is just everybody is after Lector. The missing of a story is tried to cover with cool blue pictures and a vast use of brutality. You see the guts of a man, another man is nearly dismembered and the moment where I started to laugh hysterically when the mutated killer pigs eat one of the main antagonists, because at this time the movie was just ridiculus.

Avoid this movie and look therefore maybe “Zodiac” from David Finch.