Home Entertainment : Deluxe ‘Silence’ Laser Quite Talkative

“I like the movie a lot, and it astonishes me that I made it. Wow, I learned something after the last 20 years. I learned how to make a picture.” So says director Jonathan Demme with great understatement at the end of the narrative track accompanying the just-released Criterion laser disc of the terrifying 1991 psychological thriller “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Criterion also knows how to make a laser disc. This fascinating two-disc set ($100)is no exception. It includes a sound track with insightful commentary from the Oscar-winning best picture film’s Academy Award winners: director Demme; actors Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster and screenwriter Ted Tally.

Their observations, along with knowledgeable details from FBI Behavioral Science Unit Director John Douglas, follow the film along its unrelenting 118-minute course.

Letterboxed to its theatrical aspect ratio and presented in spectacular THX picture and digital sound that is as important to this film as the full images, Criterion’s “Silence” comes at you with no holds barred. (A previous Orion/Image laser release, still available at $35, is not letterboxed.)

Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto consulted on the digital transfer. Howard Shore’s frightening score, which seemingly ferrets sound from the bowels of the Earth, can chill your blood in your own living room, enveloping you as surely as Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins) dominates his surroundings.

In addition, there are deleted, or alternate versions of several key scenes, culled from Demme’s personal VHS copy of his March 16, 1990, cut. Before the film opened, interest in the film version of the Thomas Harris bestseller ran high and, the laser-disc producers report, “pirated VHS cassettes began appearing on the bootleg market.” Because of this, “all high-quality assemblages of the film in its developmental stages were destroyed.”

Because the deleted scenes were considered “important archival records of the creative process,” Demme’s remaining VHS copy was used for this edition, even though “the quality of the image is degraded.”

The seven deleted scenes make fascinating comparisons to the final version of the film: some ramble, some expand or enhance our understanding of the complex psychological makeup of the film’s singular characters and the story line. Accompanying instructions lead you directly to the relevant chapter stops.

Other supplemental material includes essays about the stars and director by Pauline Kael, B. Ruby Rich and Lucy Hughes-Hallet. For crime buffs fascinated with the workings of the FBI and its tracking of serial killers, there are reprints of Kessler, Burgess, Burgess and Douglas’ “Crime Classification Manual Profiling Techniques,” detailing organized sexual homicide; disorganized sexual homicide; mixed sexual homicide, and sadistic homicide, along with “Voices Inside Their Heads,” an excerpt from Michael Newton’s book on serial killers.

Jodie Foster came to the project, knowing that she was “second choice,” but believing that the film’s hero, Clarice Starling, “fit into my mythology of a female hero.” In fact, Starling is “probably my most favorite character I’ve ever played,” she reports.

For Anthony Hopkins, “the scene that grabbed me . . . was the very first scene. That’s the one I latched the whole performance on.” He saw Lecter, the brilliant psychiatrist locked away as a cannibal, “as a killing machine, a man locked in the monstrosity of his mind, a clinical killer.”

One delicious moment comes when Hopkins explains how he came up with the slurping sound he uses early in the film. Everyone was surprised when they saw him do it and so they kept it in the film. Hopkins remembers thinking of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula as he did it.

Demme’s only regret is that he didn’t underscore “the child abuse that lurks at the core” of the film’s serial killers. The only down side to this excellent laser package is that the white type on the inside and back cover of the album is very hard to read against a background of photographs from the film. The package looks good until you try reading the important information contained on the three sides. This is one time Criterion should have opted for clarity over “artistic” presentation.

Laserbits

New Movies Just Out: “The Crow” (letterboxed, Image, $40); ‘Greedy” (MCA/Universal, $35); “Chasers” (Warner, $35); “Sugar Hill” (FoxVideo, $50); “My Girl 2” (Columbia TriStar, $35); “Faraway, So Close” (Columbia TriStar, $40); “8 Seconds” (New Line, $40).

Coming Soon: LIVE’s “The House of Spirits,” with Meryl Streep, is scheduled for Wednesday, at $40; Paramount’s “Naked Gun 33 1/3,” featuring Leslie Nielsen and O.J. Simpson, is due Sept. 28 at $40. “Being Human,” with Robin Williams, is coming Sept. 28 (Warner, $40).

A remastered version of Paramount’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” starring Audrey Hepburn, is scheduled for release Nov. 2 at $40. A boxed set, including a copy of the script and a CD of the soundtrack, is priced at $80.