Blast of Silence

Allen Baron

Allen Baron's Blast of Silence, released in 1961, is an existential crime thriller made on a shoestring budget. Baron himself stars as a hit man from Cleveland back in his old stomping grounds of New York City for one last job. Baron and the then blacklisted Waldo Salt grafted on a second person narration to link the film's exterior sequences, which were shot silently, with its interior sequences. Lionel Stander, also on the blacklist, provides the suitably gravely narration. The film's cinematography by Merrill Brody looks particularly spiffy on the Criterion disc I saw, providing a glimpse of a Gotham long gone. We see Rockefeller Center, Greenwich Village, and lots of shop windows done up for yuletide. The veneer of Christmas cheer is an ironic contrast to our hardboiled protagonist who makes clear his disdain for the holiday. 

The interiors of Blast of Silence are a little less memorable than the exteriors. Certainly, the anti-romantic subplot concerning an old female acquaintance of the hit man falls flat. The film does contain a rare and treasured supporting turn by Larry Tucker. Tucker would memorably play Pagliacci in Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor before finding mainstream success as Paul Mazursky's writing partner. Peter Falk was scheduled to play Blast of Silence's protagonist before accepting a more lucrative offer, so Baron's faceless affect is understandable given the circumstances. Brody had been attached to an abortive Errol Flynn picture (Cuban Rebel Girls) and looted equipment from that project, helping to cut corners on an independent picture with a measly $20,000 budget. The influence of this terse film proved to be in inverse relation to its budget or box office. Certainly, Martin Scorsese took notes on how to use the mean streets of New York to frame stories about local hoods. A memorable sequence filmed at The Village Gate is part of the lineage of the many saloon scenes found in Scorsese's films.