Reflection Paper #2: "Hannibal" and the Representation of Florence Through Genre

Danielle Cohen

Prof. Monica Francioso

Cinema and the City

Reflection Paper #2: “Hannibal” and the Representation of Florence Through Genre

            Florence is a city known for many prominent things: romance, art, history, food, wine and much more. The use of location in film may seem trivial to most viewers if it is not the precise centerpiece of the plot, however most locations are chosen very carefully and specifically. Films are intentionally shot in Florence in order to emphasize a quality of the movie by emphasizing a quality of the location. Depending on what the movie is trying to convey, the way that Florence is displayed varies within the confines of what Florence has come to be known for. In order to relay a particular message, writers and filmmakers will produce a work in a particular genre.

            Ridley Scott’s “Hannibal” (2001) is the sequel to renowned psychological thriller “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991). Another chilling addition to the narrative, “Hannibal” follows F.B.I. Agent Clarice Starling (Julienne Moore) and notorious serial killer Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) in the advancement of their infatuation with one another. We greet Agent Starling at the decline of her career; a faulty drug raid and suspended from duty, Clarice nonetheless continues to vehemently search for Hannibal Lector who has escaped to Florence where he is disguised as an art historian. Meanwhile, prior victim and millionaire Mason Verger bribes governmental agencies and recruits his own team to attempt to seek revenge on Hannibal. Through corruption, chase, and a surprising act of humanity on Hannibal Lector’s part, the famed murderer once again gets away.

            Although the entire movie does not take place in Florence, the scenes that do transpire in the city of the Renaissance employ Florence and its characteristics in intentional fashions. One main example of how Ridley Scott deliberately chooses to depict Florence is in the scene where Inspector Pazzi uses the street thief to try and obtain Hannibal’s fingerprints so that he can cash in on the colossal reward. When the scene begins, Pazzi is buying a silver bracelet on the Ponte Vecchio; the lighting key is grey and the ambiance of the scene is noisy and filled with relative pedestrian chaos. Upon catching, threatening and explaining to the gypsy his instructions in regards to Dr. Lector, the vibe of the scene shifts. The lighting key becomes darker, adding more blue and black tones to create an icy and cold feel. Additionally, as the three gentlemen race through the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo, wind and smoke bellow throughout (personally, almost to an unrealistic point), distorting the image as a whole as carts and people bustle along seemingly more rapidly.

The adjustment of illumination and the dramatic color temperature and climate effects all portray Florence is an ominous and evil manner, tapping into a persona that Florence embodies. As we have discussed throughout many of the films based in Florence, Florence is a destination can be defined by iniquity, physical and emotional danger, and deceit. Given the cinematic choices specifically in this scene, “Hannibal” uses this identity and builds upon it, thus creating a purposeful blood-crawling atmosphere that is native to the thriller genre.

            Besides strictly visual tools, the film also uses Florence’s history to create the slow and pulsing pace and subject matter that the trilogy is known for. Much of this history stems from Dante Alighieri, one of Florence’s most important figures. A philosopher, politician and poet, Dante is coined for being the father of the Italian language.  As a man of unrequited love and political exile, Dante published many influential pieces that have become pillars of Italian culture, if not literature overall. His most notable and inspirational piece is the trilogy of The Divine Comedy.

On the surface, there are a few integral connections between “Hannibal” and Dante’s history that add both interwoven and eerie attributes to the film from the start. Firstly, like Dante’s Divine Comedy, “Hannibal” is part of a trilogy. Secondly, as mentioned in the brief summary above, Hannibal has escaped from prison in the United States and has fled to Florence. Given that he is on the “Top Ten Most Wanted” list, if he were to ever return to the United States, he would immediately be captured and taken back to jail with harsher retribution nonetheless. Therefore, similar to Dante’s banishment from Florence, Hannibal is living in exile from the United States in Florence.

Collecting more evidence on this surface level yet again, when Inspector Pazzi and his wife Allegra encounter Hannibal Lector at the opera, Dr. Lector reads the couple a passage. This passage happens to be the first sonnet of Dante’s Vita Nova, thus continuing to concretize this intrinsic connection between the most well-known Florentine man and the most infamous mass murderer of this fictional time. Adding another layer of disturbing sentiment to this very instance, the passage uses such diction as “eating,” “heart,” “love” and “passion,” which for an infatuated cannibal only sends more chills down viewers’ spines—a calculated reaction to say the least.

Taking it one step further, if we examine Agent Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lector’s relationship, one can gather that it is something a tad bit more than the ordinary dynamic between an investigator and his or her criminal; this very obvious observation is one of the aspects that make “Hannibal” just so sinister. Although relations between the two of them never mutually amount to anything truly romantic or sexual, their innate captivation by one another is palpable and emphasized throughout the film. Through letters and gifts (from the Santa Maria Novella Pharmacy no less) on Hannibal’s side and Clarice’s unstoppable quest for Hannibal and his deserved punishment (in addition to snip-it’s of their personal conversations from interviews from his time in prison), their vehement interest in one another persists despite their flagrantly opposing positions to one another. Whether it symbolizes two lost souls who twistedly found purpose or connection within the other, their genuine enthrallment with each other is emblematic of a love that can never exist; a relationship that is forbidden by fate, but still manages to keep ablaze.

This dynamic starkly resembles Dante and Beatrice’s “relationship,” or at least Dante’s relationship with love. Although Dante had an arranged marriage with Gemma Donati, he claimed to have been in love with another woman named Beatrice. As the story goes, Dante met Beatrice when he was nine years old and only had two interactions with her subsequent to that. However, Dante looked to Beatrice for spiritual instruction and his reason to write and live. Her presence appeared in and at the core of many of his great works, despite their limited encounters and her death at only twenty-four. Although much debate as to whether Beatrice actually existed and many assertions that she could have been merely a literary device through which Dante could discuss love and passion, the sentiment of unfulfilled, wrong love is a central theme of Dante’s existence. This parallel between Dante and Beatrice’s relationship and that of Hannibal and Clarice’s continues to foster the deeply rooted link to Florence. Ridley Scott uses that very connection in addition to Florence’s pre-existing menacing identity in order to instill an unnerving sentiment necessary for the successful application of the thriller genre to the film.  

Another integral scene that adopts both optical and historical features is Hannibal Lector’s art history presentation that leads to Inspector Pazzi’s imminent death. The occurrence opens with an unconventional shot of the Piazza della Signoria; it appears to be late evening, as the lighting is filled with many shades of black and grey. The most striking, however, is the immense shadows that the statues in the Piazza cast. Gargantuan and ominous, the shadows give an off-putting appearance of lurking danger—danger that is not necessarily visible or predictable, but is definitely powerful and overbearing. This shot harks on the statues’ intrinsic intensity and Florence’s embedded possible role of iniquity and therefore sets an emotional foundation for the horror that ensues ahead. After a generally creepy presentation, where Hannibal delights in Pazzi’s overt arrival and then tactfully rests his hand on Pazzi’s shoulder while explaining a piece based on Dante’s Inferno, one of the more obvious illustrations of repugnance unfolds. Pazzi ultimately gets hung from the window of the Palazzo Vecchio symbolically with his bowels out, a graphic presentation that warrants immediate repulsion. However, it is what is under this incident that incites a deeper revulsion—a more psychological terror.

As Hannibal had brought up with Inspector Pazzi in their prior interactions, Pazzi’s ancestors had in fact also been executed in the Palazzo Vecchio as punishment for attempting to and succeeding at murdering Lorenzo de’ Medici and Giuliano de’ Medici, respectively. Besides the clear congruency in means of death, the reason for which Hannibal “punishes” Pazzi is a bit more convoluted. Part of Hannibal’s presentation was about a work completed based on Pier Della Vigna’s suicide and Dante’s Inferno’s 13^th canto and the 7^th circle. Hannibal goes on to compare Pier Della Vigna to Judas. Given that Pazzi is trying to sabotage Hannibal and turn him into Mason Verger for the monetary reward, Hannibal deems this act as avarice. Considering avarice is viewed as self-destruction, similar to that of suicide (i.e. Pier Della Vigna and Judas), in the name of Dante’s Inferno, religion, and Hannibal’s sheer yearn to kill, Pazzi must be punished in lieu of self-harm. The film uses Pazzi as a symbol also for Florentine greed, irresponsibility and idiocracy, as shown by this said avarice and Hannibal evidently being cognizant of his intentions and suspicion throughout the duration of their relationship. Moreover, again, this deeply entrenched partnership with Dante and therefore Florence assist in creating an overall disturbed nature of both the setting and the plot that ultimately contributes to the unsettling sentiment needed for the genre of the film.

Genre is significant to the representation of a location because it dictates which personality of the city to select, employ and perpetuate; given that the genre of a piece has a goal, it must use a location’s tools to accomplish that goal. Those tools reside in the distillation and magnification of one of the possibly many identities the location, or city, possesses. The genre gives filmmakers and viewers alike a more defined route in excavating stereotypes and meaning from the city and film itself. For example, in some of the romance or Grand Tour films we have analyzed this semester, the location has highlighted other Florentine qualities such as its epicenter for love or Florentine people’s barbarity in the eyes of the British, respectively. Although “Hannibal” is just one example, one can glean that its genre of psychological thriller definitely influenced the particular elements of Florence chosen and how they were expressed. All in all, however, it is clear that regardless of what genre is at hand, stereotypes of cities, such as Florence, will continue to be reproduced only differing in the ways in which they are convenient to particular projects.