''Blast of Silence'' is a 1961 American
neo-noir
Neo-noir is a film genre that adapts the visual style and themes of 1940s and 1950s American film noir for contemporary audiences, often with more graphic depictions of violence and sexuality. During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the term ...
film written and directed by, and starring
Allen Baron, with Molly McCarthy,
Larry Tucker, and Peter H. Clune in supporting roles. Set during
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a Religion, religious and Culture, cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by coun ...
time, it follows a
hitman
Contract killing (also known as murder-for-hire) is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of compensation, moneta ...
who returns to his native New York City to commit a murder for hire. It was produced by Merrill Brody, who was also the cinematographer.
Plot
Frankie Bono, an
Italian-American Mafia
The American Mafia, commonly referred to in North America as the Italian-American Mafia, the Mafia, or the Mob, is a highly organized Italian-American criminal society and organized crime group. The terms Italian Mafia and Italian Mob apply t ...
hitman
Contract killing (also known as murder-for-hire) is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of compensation, moneta ...
working with
the Mafia in Cleveland, returns to his hometown of 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 determine the best possible location for the hit; he discovers that when Troiano is in his daily routine, he is no longer accompanied by bodyguards. He then purchases 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 to wait before the hit, Frankie spends time in the city, where he is plagued by memories of past trauma from his former life there.
Frankie encounters his childhood friend Petey, who invites him a Christmas party with Petey's sister Lorrie, with whom Frankie was also acquainted in the past. Frankie reluctantly attends the party and uneasily enjoys spending time with a family for Christmas. The following day, Frankie visits Lorrie at her apartment, but the visit ends in disaster when Frankie suddenly attempts to make a pass at her. Lorrie forgives Frankie, but asks him to leave.
The same day, Frankie tails Troiano and his mistress to the
Village Gate jazz club in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...
. However, he is spotted by Big Ralph, who plans to
blackmail
Blackmail is a criminal act of coercion using a threat.
As a criminal offense, blackmail is defined in various ways in common law jurisdictions. In the United States, blackmail is generally defined as a crime of information, involving a thr ...
Frankie for more money for the gun. Frankie follows Ralph back to his apartment and strangles him to death following a violent fight. Losing his nerve, Frankie calls his employers to tell them that he wants to quit the job. The Mafia bosses, though, warn Frankie that he may not quit and that he has until New Year's Eve to perform the hit.
Frankie visits Lorrie again to apologize and to convince her to leave New York with him, but he learns that she has a live-in boyfriend. Frankie leaves angrily to finish the job.
After killing Troiano, Frankie narrowly evades detection by a cleaner and then calls to find the location where he may receive the rest of his payment. The meeting, set in a lonely, isolated spot on the water, is an ambush, though, and Frankie is riddled with bullets. He falls into the water, dead.
Cast
Production
Writer/director Allen Baron raised $2,800 to shoot and develop test footage, which then enabled him to raise an additional $18,000 to produce the film, and the test footage was used in the final film. The lead part was intended for
Peter Falk
Peter Michael Falk (September 16, 1927 – June 23, 2011) was an American film and television actor. He is best known for his role as Columbo (character), Lieutenant Columbo on the NBC/American Broadcasting Company, ABC series ''Columbo'' (196 ...
, Baron's friend 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 ...
theater, but Falk secured a paying job in ''
Murder, Inc.'', so the role fell to Baron, 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 ending in January 1960.
Most of the scenes were filmed in actual New York City locations without a filming permit.
Some interiors were reported to have been filmed in a studio on West 45th Street.
The exterior chase that ends the film was shot at the Old Mill on a
Jamaica Bay
Jamaica Bay (also known as Grassy Bay) is an estuary on the southern portion of the western tip of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The estuary is partially man-made, and partially natural. The bay connects with Lo ...
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, ...
(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 said to be a dumping ground for the dead bodies of mob hits, which is why Baron selected it for the scene. Its isolation also meant that a full day's shooting could take place without permits. The final shot was filmed in one take. Baron performed 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 channel, movie-oriented pay television, pay-TV television network, network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcas ...
''
The film was shot with equipment that had been abandoned in Cuba after the shooting of
Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959) was an Australian and American actor who achieved worldwide fame during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles, frequent partnerships with Oliv ...
's final film, ''
Cuban Rebel Girls'', when the crew was forced to flee the country because of the
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution () was the military and political movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, in which Batista overthrew ...
. Baron struck a deal with the producers of ''Cuban Rebel Girls'' to use the equipment if he could to smuggle it out of Cuba. Baron, who had been a crew member during the ''Cuban Rebel Girls'' shoot, had accidentally shot and wounded a man and was wanted in Cuba for the crime. He also had an affair with a woman whom he did not realize was the girlfriend of a 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. He wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplays for ''Midnight Cowboy'' (1969) and ''Coming Home (1978 film), Coming Home'' (1978).
Early life and career
S ...
using the name Mel Davenport, and was read, uncredited, by blacklisted actor
Lionel Stander
Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor, activist, and a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. He had an extensive career in theatre, film, radio, and television that spanned nearly 70 years, ...
. Stander was paid $500 for the work, and it would have cost an additional $500 to use his name in the credits.
Baron and producer Merrill Brody sold the permanent film rights to
Universal for $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 entered in the
Spoleto Film Festival in
Spoleto, Italy, the
Locarno Film Festival
The Locarno International Film Festival is a major international film festival, held annually in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narr ...
in Switzerland, and the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world.
Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
.
Critical response
Eugene Archer of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' wrote that the film was "awkward and pretentious" because it tried to hew to American conventions of filmmaking while attempting to be "offbeat and 'arty'", but Archer praised the New York location filming.
In ''
Photoplay
''Photoplay'' was one of the first American film fan magazines, its title another word for screenplay. It was founded in Chicago in 1911. Under early editors Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk, in style and reach it became a pacesetter for fan m ...
'', 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 magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'', Richard Brody wrote, "many of the images deserve to be iconic."
J.R. Jones of the ''
Chicago Reader
The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. The ''Reader'' has been ...
'' wrote that the film "might seem comical if it weren’t so rooted in existential dread."
Home media
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". A "sister company" of art film, arth ...
released ''Blast of Silence'' on DVD in 2008.
The disc's special features included a new 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 comic book by artist Sean Phillips.[ On December 5, 2023, the Criterion Collection reissued the film on ]Blu-ray
Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...
featuring a new 4K restoration of the film in two different aspect ratios.
Notes
References
Sources
*
External links
*
*
*
*
Joe Dante on ''Blast of Silence''
at Trailers From Hell
''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
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blast of Silence
1961 films
1961 directorial debut films
American black-and-white films
American Christmas films
American crime thriller films
American neo-noir films
Film noir
Films about contract killing
Films set in New York City
Films shot in New York (state)
Universal Pictures films
1960s crime thriller films
1960s English-language films
1960s American films
English-language crime thriller films