''Blast of Silence'' is a 1961 American
neo-noir
Neo-noir is a revival of film noir, a genre that had originally flourished during the post-World War II era in the United Statesroughly from 1940 to 1960. The French term, ''film noir'', translates literally to English as "black film", indicating ...
written, directed by, and starring
Allen Baron
Allen Baron (born 1927) is an American television and film director, actor, and comic book artist.
In his early 20s, he drew romance and science fiction comic stories. Upon visiting a Paramount sound stage in the mid-1950s, he decided he wanted ...
. The film also stars Molly McCarthy and
Larry Tucker and features Peter H. Clune. It was produced by Merrill Brody, who was also the cinematographer.
Plot
Frankie Bono, a hitman from Cleveland, returns to New York City during Christmas week to kill Troiano, a middle-management mobster. The assassination will be risky, and Frankie is warned by the go-between who delivers the front half of Frankie's money that the contract will be reneged if he is spotted before the hit is performed.
Frankie follows his target to select the best possible location, but opts to wait until Troiano isn't being accompanied by his bodyguards. He then goes to purchase a revolver from Big Ralph, an obese man who keeps sewer rats as pets. The encounter with this old acquaintance leaves Frankie feeling disgusted. With several days left before the hit is to be performed, Frankie decides to kill time in the city, where he is plagued by memories of past trauma during his time living there.
While sitting alone for a drink, Frankie is spotted by his childhood friend Petey, who invites the reluctant Frankie to a Christmas party with Petey's sister, Lorrie., where Frankie. The following day, Frankie goes to see Lorrie at her apartment to get reacquainted with her, but the visit ends in disaster when an initially vulnerable Frankie suddenly attempts to sexually assault her. Lorrie forgives Frankie for his actions and calmly asks him to leave, and he obliges.
The same day, Frankie tails Troiano and his mistress to a jazz club in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. However, he is spotted by Big Ralph, who decides to blackmail Frankie for more money for the gun. Frankie stalks Ralph back to his tenement apartment and strangles him to death following a violent fight. Losing his nerve, Frankie calls his employers to tell them he wants to quit the job. Unsympathetic, he is told that he is in trouble for even thinking of quitting, and that he has until New Year's Eve to perform the hit.
Having settled on using Troiano's mistress's apartment as the location for the hit, Frankie makes one last stop at Lorrie's home to apologize for his behavior and to convince her to leave New York with him, only to learn she has a live-in boyfriend. Frankie leaves angrily to finish the job.
After killing Troiano, Frankie narrowly evades being caught by Troiano's mistress, and then calls to get the location to receive the rest of his payment. However the meeting, in a lonely isolated spot on the water, is an ambush, and Frankie is riddled with bullets. He falls into the water, dead.
Cast
*
Allen Baron
Allen Baron (born 1927) is an American television and film director, actor, and comic book artist.
In his early 20s, he drew romance and science fiction comic stories. Upon visiting a Paramount sound stage in the mid-1950s, he decided he wanted ...
as Frank Bono
* Molly McCarthy as Lorrie
*
Larry Tucker as Big Ralph
* Peter H. Clune as Troiano
* Danny Meehan as Petey
*
Howard Mann as Bodyguard
* Charles Creasap as Contact man
* Bill DePrato as Joe Boniface
* Milda Memenas as Troiano's girl friend
* Joe Bubbico as Bodyguard
* Ruth Kaner as Cleaning woman
* Gil Rogers as Gangster
* Jerry Douglas as Gangster
* Dan Saroyan as Lorrie's boyfriend
* Dean Sheldon as Nightclub singer
* Erich Kollmar as Bellhop
* Mel Spandar as Drummer
*
Lionel Stander
Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor in films, radio, theater and television. He is best remembered for his role as majordomo Max on the 1980s mystery television series '' Hart to Hart''.
Early ...
as Narrator
:*
Production
Writer/director Allen Baron raised $2,800 to shoot and develop test footage, which then enabled him to raise an additional $180,000 to make the film; the test footage was used in the final film. The lead part was intended for
Peter Falk, a friend of Baron's from
summer stock
In American theater, summer-stock theater is a theater that presents stage productions only in the summer. The name combines the season with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes. Summer stock th ...
theater, but Falk got a paying job in ''
Murder, Inc.
Murder, Inc. (Murder, Incorporated) was an organized crime group, active from 1929 to 1941, that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicatea closely connected criminal organization that included the Italian-American Mafia, the ...
'', so the role fell to Baron to play, with the test footage serving as his screen test. Many of Baron's friends and family appear in the film.
Twenty-two days of shooting took place over a four-month period of time ending in January 1960.
The majority of scenes were filmed in actual New York City locations, without a filming permit.
Reportedly, some interiors were shot in a studio on West Forty-Fifth Street.
The exterior chase that ends the film was shot at the "Old Mill" on a
Jamaica Bay estuary on Long Island during
Hurricane Donna
Hurricane Donna, known in Puerto Rico as Hurricane San Lorenzo, was the strongest hurricane of the 1960 Atlantic hurricane season, and caused severe damage to the Lesser Antilles, the Greater Antilles, and the East Coast of the United States, e ...
(September 10–12, 1960), the only hurricane of the 20th century to blanket the entire East Coast from south Florida to Maine. The location was locally said to be a dumping ground for the dead bodies of mob hits, which is why it was selected by Baron for the scene. Its isolation also meant that a full day's shooting could take place without permits. The final shot, with the dead hit man falling into the water, was made in one take; Baron did his own stunts.
[Muller, Eddie (December 19, 2021) Outro to TCM presentation on "Noir Alley" '']Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of At ...
''
The film was shot with equipment that had been left behind in Cuba after the shooting of
Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959) was an Australian-American actor who achieved worldwide fame during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles, frequent partnerships with Olivia ...
's final film, ''
Cuban Rebel Girls'' when the crew had to flee the country due to the
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in co ...
. Baron made a deal with that film's producers that he could use the equipment if he managed to smuggle it out of the country. Complicating the situation was that Baron, who had been a crew member on that shoot, had accidentally shot and wounded a man, and was wanted in Cuba for that crime. He had also unknowingly slept with the girlfriend of a local Cuban gangster.
The narration – which was added after the film was completed, to help tie it together – was written by blacklisted writer
Waldo Salt
Waldo Miller Salt (October 18, 1914 – March 7, 1987) was an American screenwriter who won Academy Awards for both ''Midnight Cowboy'' and '' Coming Home''.
Early life and career
Salt was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Winifred (n ...
, using the name Mel Davenport, and read, uncredited, by blacklisted actor
Lionel Stander
Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor in films, radio, theater and television. He is best remembered for his role as majordomo Max on the 1980s mystery television series '' Hart to Hart''.
Early ...
. Stander was paid $500 for the work; it would have cost an additional $500 to use Stander's name in the credits.
Baron and the producer, Merrill Brody, sold the rights to the film ''in perpetuity'' to Universal for a mere $50,000.
Release
''Blast of Silence'' was released in Chicago on June 5, 1961 and in New York City on December 29, 1961.
[ ] The film was also an entry at the
Spoleto Film Festival in
Spoleto, Italy, the
Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, and was an invited entry at the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
.
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...
released ''Blast of Silence'' on DVD in 2008. The disc's special features include a new, restored digital transfer, a making-of featurette (''Requiem for a Killer: The Making of Blast of Silence),'' rare on-set
Polaroid photos, and images of locations as they existed in 2008. Also included is a booklet featuring an essay by film critic
Terrence Rafferty
Terrence Rafferty is a film critic who wrote regularly for ''The New Yorker'' during the 1990s. His writing has also appeared in '' Slate'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''The Village Voice'', ''The Nation'', and ''The New York Times''. For a number ...
and a four-page comic by
Sean Phillips
Sean Phillips (born 27 January 1965) is a British comic book artist, best known for his collaborations with Ed Brubaker on comics including '' Sleeper'', ''Incognito'', the '' Criminal'' series of comics, '' Fatale'', '' The Fade Out'', and ' ...
(''
Criminal'', ''
Sleeper'', ''
Marvel Zombies'').
Reception
Eugene Archer of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' wrote that the film was "awkward and pretentious" because it was trying to hew to American conventions of filmmaking while attempting to be "offbeat and 'arty'", but Archer praised the filming of places in New York City. In ''
Photoplay'', Janet Graves wrote that the "unpretentious air" clashes with the style of the narration, described by the writer as "both fancy and too-too tough".
In ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', Richard Brody wrote "many of the images deserve to be iconic." J.R. Jones in ''
Chicago Reader'' wrote that the film "might seem comical if it weren’t so rooted in existential dread."
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
Joe Dante on ''Blast of Silence''at
Trailers From Hell
''Trailers from Hell'' (branded as ''Trailers from Hell!'') is a web series in which filmmakers discuss and promote individual movies through commenting on their trailers. While the series emphasizes horror, science fiction, fantasy, cult, and expl ...
''Blast of Silence: Bad Trip''an essay by
Terrence Rafferty
Terrence Rafferty is a film critic who wrote regularly for ''The New Yorker'' during the 1990s. His writing has also appeared in '' Slate'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''The Village Voice'', ''The Nation'', and ''The New York Times''. For a number ...
at the
Criterion Collection
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blast of Silence
1961 films
1960s crime thriller films
American black-and-white films
American crime thriller films
Film noir
Films about contract killing
Films set in New York City
Films shot in New York (state)
American Christmas films
Universal Pictures films
American neo-noir films
1961 directorial debut films
1960s English-language films
1960s American films