A Dour, Hallucinatory Neo-Noir, 1960’s ‘Blast of Silence’ Is Back on Blu-Ray

A field of black is interrupted by a wavering pinprick of light. A grainy, seen-it-all voice begins its recitation. “Remembering out of black silence. You were born in pain.” We hear a woman shrieking over the soundtrack. “Easy, easy does it little mother. You never lost a father. Your job is done, little mother.” A jazzy track commences; a slap is heard, a baby cries. “You were born with hate and anger built-in.” The light continues to approach. We are in a train coming out from a tunnel. “Later you learned . . . [to] let out the hate and anger another way.” So begins the tale of a hitman from Cleveland out to earn his pay in the drab environs of Manhattan circa 1960, Frankie Bono.“Blast of Silence” has been released on Blu-Ray by the Criterion Collection, having undergone a 4K restoration that has been given the nod of approval from its director, 96-year-old Allen Baron. Though Mr. Baron has done the majority of his work in television — among much else, helming episodes of “Charlie’s Angels,” “Room 222,” and “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” — this neo-noir done on the cheap is likely his testament to the ages.The film has gained in stature since its release. “Blast of Silence” has made the rounds internationally, popping up at prestigious film festivals. The New Yorker deemed Mr. Baron’s film “a dazzlingly brisk yet richly nuanced drama.” A film critic whose essay on the film accompanies the Blu-Ray, Terence Rafferty, is more circumspect in his enthusiasm. The picture, he writes, has “the melancholy aura of something displaced, of a traveling salesman’s loneliness.” Would “Blast of Silence” have retained its unkempt appeal had the actor scheduled to play Frankie Bono, Peter Falk, not skipped out on Mr. Baron to appear in “Murder, Inc.” (1960)? The choice worked out well for Falk: he was nominated as Best Supporting Actor in the role of true-to-life assassin Abe Reles. As history has panned out, it worked out for Mr. Baron, too. Stepping into the lead role out of necessity, Mr. Baron didn’t have much in the way of acting chops, but he did cut a suitably thuggish figure. Sometimes presence is all a movie needs.A scene from ‘Blast of Silence.’ Criterion CollectionThe film was woven with a tangled web. The camera equipment was smuggled out of Cuba after the crew of an Errol Flynn vehicle, “Cuban Rebel Girls” (1959), abandoned it in order to flee the revolution. Is it true that Mr. Baron was already wanted on the island state for an accidental shooting and for bedding the moll of a local gangster? The film’s narration was written by Waldo Salt and read by Lionel Stander, both of whom had been blacklisted. “Blast of Silence” was cobbled together through some trying circumstances.What was Mr. Baron doing making a film noir in 1960? A film genre is always viable — that is, if there are filmmakers who approach it with imagination, wit, and vigor — but the heyday of shadowy alleyways, sultry women of dubious pursuit, and fedora-wearing, cool-as-ice gents had petered out in the mid-1950s. The characteristics of film noir — let’s not call them “clichés” — had been so well established by the time “Blast of Silence” came around that its down-at-the-heels existentialism had to come across as something of a parody. At this date, there’s no getting around the high comedy of a straight-faced Stander growling a line like “if you want a woman, buy one. In the dark, so she won’t remember your face.” Still, the narration does enliven the abundant scenes of anti-hero Bono striding ceaselessly through the byways of a less than sparkling Manhattan. No romance here, should you be seeking nostalgia. When Bono walks down Fifth Avenue to stop and look at Christmas window displays, architectural landmarks we may recognize come off as dingy and run-of-the-mill. There’s a definite aesthetic to “Blast of Silence,” that’s for sure.The picture takes on a dour hallucinatory tone. Bono wends his way through a city that is alternately jam-packed with holiday revelers and eerily absent of any human presence. Hoping to dine alone on Christmas Eve, he bumps into an old friend and his sister — that would be Lorrie (Molly McCarthy) who was, it seems, more than a grade school crush. Bono becomes somewhat optimistic. This hit, he promises himself, will be the last hit. Perhaps, he begins to wonder, Lorrie will be part of his future . . . ?Noir is, almost by definition, devoid of sunny denouements and so it is with “Blast of Silence.” That’s no spoiler: the bitter end is foretold — and oversold — by the narrator. So let him close this review as well: “God moves in mysterious ways, they said . . . and this is it, baby boy Frankie Bono. You’re alone now, all alone. The scream is dead. There’s no pain.”

A Dour, Hallucinatory Neo-Noir, 1960’s ‘Blast of Silence’ Is Back on Blu-Ray

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