The very first shot of Silence of the Lambs is Clarice running on her own in the woods, our natural sense of films tells us that she is in danger, that she is the first victim when in fact this couldn’t be further from the truth. From the off we are forced to question our previous inclincations about film roles, this is something new.
This fact is reinforced so much in the film that the FBI allowed Demme to film in the actual BAU because they thought the film would be a campaign for more female applicants to the FBI.
In the lift, Starling is completely surrounded by men who are all a foot taller than her, this is a male dominated world, and the men can’t stop looking at her like shes not supposed to be there.
You view the world through Starling’s eyes, you see how men look at her, how Crawford, Chilton and Lecter all look at her.
There is another moment like the moment in the lift in the funeral home, with all the men stood around her. Crawford says that there is matter too explicit to talk about with Clarice there, Clarice pulls him up on this later, saying that those officers will look to him about how to act and that he has to be aware of this. Making a very clever statement directly to those in high ranking positions, positions people look up too.
We see men looking at Clarice, but when she is talking to Hannibal he is looking away, in the other direction. He just wants to know whats in her head, nothing more. He has a great deal of respect for her and is polite. She is an equal in every way.
When Clarice and her friend are talking we go from one close up shot to another, we see them both as they see eachother, equals. No objectification, no looking down or fragmentation of the female form. This is similar to how Clarice is viewed in Lecters eyes.
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