"Blast of Silence" is a 77-minute black-and-white 1961 movie about a contract killer (a "hit man") written by, directed by, and starring Allen Baron. Baron plays Frankie Bono, who is back in New York City to whack a mobster Troiano (Peter H. Clune) who has gotten too ambitious for some other gangster higher in the food chain to tolerate.

In 77 minutes Frankie gets around. I don't think he gets off the Staten Island Ferry, but it is on it that he learns who his target it. Most of the movie takes place in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I'm not sure where Troiano's home is, but the movie ends in Queens -- a derelict fishing village on the edge of Jamaica Bay.

Hitmen had been portrayed in American movies before 1961 -- "This Gun for Hire" (1942), "The Killers" (1946), "The Narrow Margin" (1952), etc. -- but with the focus primarily on the targets rather than on the shootist. As a movie about the loneliness of a professional killer, "Blast of Silence" adumbrated Jean-Pierre Melville's great 1967 "Le Samourai." Apparently at the time of its release (by Universal with no publicity), "Blast of Silence" was seen by some cineastes as influenced by Jean-Luc Godard's "A bout de souffle" (Breathless, 1959). In 1990 footage of Baron shot for German tv, Baron said that he had not heard of Godard at the time, but can say similarities beyond titles (in English) starting with "B." Both showed criminals. Both had small budgets. Both made cities de facto characters: Paris for Godard, NYC for Baron.

The 1990 documentary (which is augmented on the Criterion DVD with about 20 additional minutes of 2006 interview) follows Baron around looking at the locales shown in his move 29 years later (now 18 years ago). He has interesting things to say about what had and hadn't changed in three decades and about making the movie with no money.

Baron says that Peter Falk was supposed to play the hit man, but went off to make "Murder, Inc." instead (another movie about contract killing, one that launched Falk's career). Baron, whose background was in commercial art and cartoon-drawing, had not intended to take the part, but after Falk bowed out, Baron recalls that he considered himself the best actor available for the part -- and the only one he could afford.

I think he was quite good in the part that was, of course, tailored for him, though in the documentary he also says that at the time he did not realize how much of the loneliness of the character was autobiographical.

Baron wrote himself very few lines. He speaks with great unwillingness to Big Ralph Larry Tucker, who was more a writer than an actor, but who was memorable as Pagliacci in Sam Fuller's (1963) "Shock Corridor") who will get a .38 with a silencer to do the hit, and with an ex-girlfriend (or a young woman who once had a crush on him?) Lorrie (Molly McCarthy). There is a lot of miscommunication in the tentative "romance," so it is impossible to tell whether Baron and McCarthy are awkward as performers or performing awkwardness. (There is no question about Tucker, who is chillingly good as someone with whom Frank Bono would want to have as little contact as possible!)

The movie is very good at showing Frank planning the hit, his loneliness exacerbated by Christmas (Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, department store windows, the very odd party at Lorrie's apartment).

It cannot, however, be lauded for showing not telling, because it has a very overbearing, hard-boiled, gravel-voiced voice-over delivered by then-blacklisted actor Lionel Stander (Hangmen Also Die!; Hart-to-Hart). The narration was apparently written by blacklisted writer Waldo Salt (who went on to write screenplays for "Midnight Cowboy" and "Coming Home"). Extensive voice-over narration was common in noirs (though not a defining feature IMO). What is most interesting about this one is that it is addressed to the character ("Your hands are sweating," etc.). More than a few noirs had narrations from characters who were dead, and others had narration in the first person from characters who survive the story; there must have been others that purported to tell the character what he was feeling as a way to tell the audience, though none leap to mind.

As a no-budget movie about a nasty business and with repellent characters (I mean Troiano and Big Ralph) "Blast of the Past" is impressive. There is a tendency to be so impressed in the high bang-for-the-buck ratio that interesting small projects get overpraised. I think that the visual compositions in "Blast of Silence" are outstanding (including one of those noir staircases), the acting naturalistic, the edgy, jazzy soundtrack music (by Meyer Kupferman) excellent, and the fugitively filmed locales (including Harlem) are interesting. My complaint is with some of the sententious narration, particularly the repetition of "God moves in mysterious ways." IMO, the sneering narration seems overly insistent in forcing judgments on the viewer, as well as being superfluous in many junctures.

The print and transfers of a B-film that was resurrected in 1990 (both in Munich and in San Francisco's Noir Film Festival) are stunningly good, and the "making of" feature ("Requiem for a Killer: The Making of 'Blast of Silence'" from 1990 and 2006) in the form of revisiting the locations Baron shot is fascinating (and nearly as long as the documented film!)


© 2008, Stephen O. Murray



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age