MartinHafer If you watch "Blast of Silence", I strongly recommend you watch the accompanying making of featurette featuring Allen Baron reminiscing decades later about the film. This is because it really helps you appreciate how good the movie is. After all, although the film looks very professionally made, it was assembled with a shoestring budget. In fact, the budget was so tiny that the writer/director, Baron, was forced to act in the lead. This is pretty funny, as he was just perfect in this role--yet this was only his second (and last) acting credit! I would really love it if young filmmakers today watched BOTH to get an idea of economy in filmmaking and that you don't need huge budgets nor big names to make a decent film.As for "Blast of Silence", it's a wonderful noir-like film. I say 'noir-like' because it's a lot less like an American film noir picture and more like one of the next generation that including the French noir films. In many ways, this film is comparable to those of directors like Melville--very compactly told and with little in the way of filler or remorse. Additionally, I kept thinking to myself that Allen Baron sure bore a strong similarity to one of my favorite gangster actors, Lino Ventura--the look and the style were clearly similar.The story is simple. A cold assassin named Frank Bono (Allen) is in New York to make a hit for the mob. However, he's got a few days to kill. This along with a betrayal by one of his 'associates' take Bono off his game. While the hit goes off pretty much as planned, Bono uncharacteristically shows that his nerves are on edge and he's tired of the life--both things which make him a liability.The film is told very well and I loved most of it. However, like too many gangster films of the 1940s-60s, there is an unnecessary narration. While Allen must have been thrilled to get the character actor Lionel Stander to narrate (and his voice was perfect), I don't think it added anything to the film and could have easily been eliminated. Still, it is a much better than average crime film--and a marvelous example of inexpensive filmmaking. Ironically, Allen went on to have a very long career...but almost completely with television and not in film despite the quality of this production.

Spikeopath Blast of Silence is written and directed by Allen Baron, he also stars along with Molly McCarthy, Larry Tucker and Peter Clume. Music is by Meyer Kupferman and cinematography by Merrill Brody.It's Christmas week and hit man Frankie Bono (Baron) blows into New York City from Cleveland to take out a mobster who has gotten above his station. Casing locales and plotting his course of action, Frankie is shaken out of his dead cold approach to his work by a couple of faces from his past…Blast of Silence beats a black heart, stripped down to the basics it's a film about one man who hasn't known what it is like to be human. Frankie Bono is case study of self-loathing, of how to hate everything around him, his biggest crime may not actually be the hits he carries out with cold blooded efficiency, but that of being born in the first place. But now Frankie, in all his miserable glory, has strolled into the Big Apple and hitched a ride to noirville, and those well balanced ice chips on his shoulders are starting to melt.The air is pungent, reeking of fatalism, pessimism and of course nihilism. New York City is a place of towering construction wonders, we can see that, but Baron and Brody film it as a foreboding entity, with a cold grey veneer befitting our hit man rattled out of his cemented equilibrium. The constant gravel voiced narration by Lionel Stander is in the second person, it's also in Frankie's head, mocking him, reminding him of failures and pitfalls, of impending misery. While over the top is Kupferman's jazzy score, where at times it's like a panzer attack (that ferocious double bass is just magnificent), at others a melancholic lament to a life never lived.The low budget and use of every day Joe actors helps keep the film grounded, which is just perfect for the tale. There's no need for histrionics or visual tricks here, Baron and Brody use the naturalism of the actors and the city surrounds to great effect, covering proceedings in a semi-documentary style. Blast of Silence is a hard picture, it isn't trying to cheer you up, this is not a Christmas movie for annual pleasures. From the super opening of a speeding train birthing out of a tunnel, to the bleak finale, it's a film noir movie of considerable class. Don't let anyone tell you film noir ended in 1958… 9/10

secondtake Blast of Silence (1961)In some ways, the filming and the cool grey timbre of this film are so singular and evocative, you really have to watch it. In this way it reminded me of a gritty, New York version of the 1958 Elevator to the Gallows (set in Paris). They both have some of the most beautiful, evocative scenes of people just walking the streets of the city, day and night. In "Blast of Silence" you get taken to several parts of New York, unedited, shot with a simple but elegant intuition for the place. This is a movie by New Yorkers about New York.But the plot, about a lone killer on his last dubious assignment, is a strain. Beyond the convincing despondency and isolation of the leading actor (Allen Baron, from Brooklyn, who is also the director), the cast struggles to be relevant. The one other shining performance is the gun dealing and rat lover, played by Larry Tucker with a kind of relish for the unsavory dirty aspects of his part. Great stuff.If you accept that the story isn't much, by itself, and watch it for the scenes of the city, for the impressions of ordinary New Yorkers at the time of Kennedy's election, you will be really wowed. Right from the first shot, the low budget hand held camera on a train in a tunnel, going on and on until finally finding the light of day, to the last scenes in a a light, windy, driven snow in the Meadowlands, it's a thrilling, original ride. The filming has a gritty, everyman quality that seems to come right from art school without the affectation. It really is worth it just for the scenes, and the urban scenery.

fredmelden-1 I find it hard to believe that this was seriously considered at Cannes in 1961, and praised at the Munich Festival in 1987. Let me list a few of its flaws, and giving a wide allowance for the fact that it was an independent film. First, the quality of the video is poor; for an indie, that's probably expectable. Second, the music is heavy and awful - probably cliché even for 1961. Further, the music often adds nothing to a scene, and frequently feels totally out of pace with it. For example, why would it have the kind of music it uses to accompany the stalking of the victim? Third, The walking scenes are far too long, especially those where no stalking is occurring. We see Bono just walking and walking and... We see this at night and in the daytime, and frankly, posing the 'city as a character' doesn't justify it. The director/writer takes no pains to actually explore the city AS a character; he merely displays it, and that is something quite different. Fourth, this is heavily narrated. Narration is normally considered a weakness, a crutch used when the action and dialog do not do their job of fully conveying the what and why of the story - a perfect description in this case. Fifth, the actor displays almost no emotion. Of course, one could say this is congruent with the character - a hit man. However, the narration establishes the 'fact' that Bono gets himself worked up into a hate for his victim. If that's his M.O., it should show on the screen. It absolutely does not, but his bad acting does. Sixth, he fights Big Ralph in an apartment, and in the process pretty much tears the place up. Surprisingly, no neighbors come out to see what's happening. It may be a minor point, but there are several such that destroy the film's credibility. Seventh, so does the silencer. He fires the gun and it makes a fairly loud sound, despite the silencer. Eighth, (going back to Ralph), it's unlikely he would threaten to rat on - of all people - a hit man! 'If I hear he dies, I'll know you killed him, and I'll tell on you, unless you pay me.' Uh, huh. Ninth, the contractor gives Bono half the money and promises the rest later. You don't have to be a mafioso to know it's never done that way. I don't know that it was EVER done that way, but certainly not in 1961. Just a plot device? Maybe, but a pretty weak one. Tenth, the movie is a short hour-and-a-quarter. Perhaps I should consider this a plus! I could go on, but I'm tired of writing, and these cover the main problems. Even allowing for the low budget, this is a poor film. Hearing that he was considered back then a new-generation Orson Welles is ridiculous. Welles might have considered Baron as a gaffer, but little more. As a TV director or producer, he may have been adequate, but not as a movie director or screenwriter.