Are some films actu­al­ly bet­ter suit­ed to small­er screens?

Every self-respect­ing cinephile agrees that the best way to watch a film is on a big screen at a cin­e­ma. To be appre­ci­at­ed prop­er­ly, a film must be seen at an appro­pri­ate large scale and heard via a boom­ing, high qual­i­ty sound-sys­tem, that demands the viewer’s com­plete atten­tion. Going to the cin­e­ma is to many even a qua­si-reli­gious endeav­our, a rit­u­alised expe­ri­ence that takes place in a dark­ened room where devo­tees come for communion.

But is this real­ly always the case? Since the inven­tion of the home tele­vi­sion set in the 1950s there have been an ever-grow­ing num­ber of ways through which to con­sume the visu­al arts, to the extent that films can now be watched on pock­et-sized per­son­al devices. It may seem like sac­ri­lege to sug­gest as much, but could it be that some films are bet­ter suit­ed to these oth­er screens?

One con­tender is Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. As a hor­ror film, it belongs to a genre that has proven itself the most adapt­able to the world of small screens, with many suc­cess­ful works com­ing off the back of home video releas­es rather than the­atri­cal runs, and with straight-to-home video releas­es com­mon. Why this par­tic­u­lar genre? Per­haps it’s the sense of con­trol over the scary moments the view­er has at home, where they can choose whether to keep the lights on, and pause at their own dis­cre­tion. Or maybe because of the plea­sures of gath­er­ing togeth­er in a group late at night to get scared watch­ing it together.

But in the case of The Silence of the Lambs, it is the way the film is shot that ren­ders it bet­ter suit­ed to the inti­ma­cy of a small screen than the grandeur of the cin­e­ma. It is often said that films demand to be watched on the big screen, but Demme’s film is dif­fer­ent – it demands to be seen up close, with prox­im­i­ty to the screen arguably more impor­tant than its size.

Two of the film’s traits in par­tic­u­lar work bet­ter when viewed up close – the fre­quent use of extreme close-up, and Han­ni­bal Lecter’s attempts to get into Clarice Starling’s head (and, by asso­ci­a­tion, our heads). Take the first meet­ing between the pair, when Clarice vis­its Han­ni­bal in his soli­tary con­fine­ment cell. At first he is framed in pro­file, his stiff, sta­t­ic pos­ture elic­it­ing a rel­a­tive­ly benign, unthreat­en­ing demeanour. The start of their exchange is cap­tured via shot-reverse shot with the cam­era far enough away so that their heads and tor­sos are visible.

But then, as if Han­ni­bal him­self is instruct­ing the cam­era, he beck­ons her to come ​‘clos­er’, and we cut to a close-up of him – not over the shoul­der this time, but as an almost direct­ly point of view – that sud­den­ly brings into focus the unre­lent­ing stare and men­ac­ing grin that make him one of the cinema’s most fright­en­ing vil­lains. We cut to Clarice, who oblig­ing­ly moves towards him until her head and shoul­ders fill the frame. And then, most unnerv­ing­ly of all, we cut to Han­ni­bal again as he moves clos­er to the cam­era so that he fills the frame in an extreme close-up, look­ing both direct­ly at her and direct­ly at us.

When viewed up close on, say, a lap­top screen, Hannibal’s threat­en­ing sense of near­ness is heav­i­ly pro­nounced in a way that a cin­e­ma screen can­not quite match. Unlike at the cin­e­ma, where the view­er sits at some dis­tance from the screen, on a small­er device one’s vision is almost total­ly con­sumed by the image, mak­ing for a hor­ri­bly unset­tling claus­tro­pho­bic expe­ri­ence. And if lis­tened to on head­phones, this effect is even more pro­nounced, with Hannibal’s hiss­ing and sug­ges­tive words beamed direct­ly into the viewer’s ears.

In a film about get­ting into the heads of psy­chopaths, as well as our own deep­est dark­est thoughts, such an immer­sive method of view­ing seems the most appro­pri­ate. When­ev­er Han­ni­bal probes Clarice dur­ing their lat­er exchanges about her per­son­al life and inner­most thoughts, the cam­era again zooms in for an extreme close-up, and is some­times framed so that he is look­ing direct­ly at the cam­era, and there­fore us. That his face – more specif­i­cal­ly, his mouth – is the most fright­en­ing part of him, as the weapon he uses to bite and eat his vic­tims, as well as pour poi­so­nous words into oth­ers’ ears, only serves to rein­force the hor­ror of see­ing his face up so close.

The final shot of the film offers some release from this relent­less prox­im­i­ty when Han­ni­bal, now escaped, moves away from the cam­era into a crowd­ed space as the cam­era simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pans back, ren­der­ing him small­er and small­er before we can­not iden­ti­fy him at all. The film ends, and final­ly he is out of our faces, although we’re left with a new, dif­fer­ence sense of unease at the thought of him hid­den in some anony­mous crowd somewhere.

Made in the ear­ly 1990s, Demme obvi­ous­ly did not intend for The Silence of the Lambs to be watched on any­thing oth­er than a cin­e­ma screen. Yet the film stands as a per­fect exam­ple of how cer­tain films lend them­selves to dif­fer­ent view­ing expe­ri­ences. With vir­tu­al real­i­ty on the hori­zon, it will be fas­ci­nat­ing to see how film­mak­ers respond to our brave new mul­ti-screen world.