BLAST OF SILENCE (Magla Productions, 1961)

D: Allen Baron. P: Merrill S. Brody. W: Allen Baron, Waldo Salt [narration]. Ph: Merrill S. Brody. M: Meyer Kupferman. St: Allen Baron (Frank Bono), Molly McCarthy (Lori), Larry Tucker (Big Ralph), Peter Clune (Troiano), Danny Meehan (Petey)

“You learnt to hold back the scream and let out the hate and anger in other ways”

This bleak post-noir insight into the workings of a hitman is often completely attributed to marginal filmmaker Baron, but the role played in its realisation by producer/cinematographer Merrill S. Brody is just as significant. Like Baron, Brody has few cinematic credits, although he did work with the star/director in the same dual capacity on the equally grim Terror in the City. Together the duo were adept at conjuring images of a foreboding cityscape and a mood of dislocation.

 

 

This study of a soulless and companionless assassin is hung on a skeletal plot. Baby Boy Frank Bono (as the omnipresent third-person narration addresses him) has been hired to exterminate Troiano, a lower-rank hoodlum, and travels from Cleveland to his former neighbourhood in New York to see the job through. The hit is to be concluded during the Christmas holiday; the folksy atmosphere of the period provides a disconcertingly contrasting backdrop, familiar motifs giving Bono “the creeps”. Over the course of the week he tries to shrug off contact with some old faces while trying desperately to connect with another. Behind the sterile monochrome, the gruff tones of blacklisted narrator Lionel Stander both chide Bono, urging him on to the kill, and give voice to an inner hatred born from being brought up in an orphanage. Some commentators have found the omnipresent narration intrusive; yet it adds a sociopathic angle to the imagery, augmenting the profound sense of resentment harboured by Bono.

 
The environment Baron and Brody present is markedly different from that of the post-war noir cycle. New York becomes another character to rankle with Bono, and hip locations like the Harlem Apollo and The Village Gate are as integral to the film’s design as the Staten Island Ferry (where Bono is handed his instructions) and the monolithic structure of Brooklyn Bridge. A shot stolen in the small hours as he walks towards camera down one of the city’s interminable boulevards enforces Bono’s sense of alienation. His contact for a .38, Big Ralph, is an obese beatnik with an attitude as objectionable as the apartment he keeps cluttered with rat-filled cages. When this particularly loathsome character tries to blackmail the assassin it leads to a jolting burst of violence when Bono attempts to silence Ralph with an axe. The fight, in Ralph’s darkened apartment, is symbolically foregrounded by a silhouette of a caged rat.

Socialising is not Bono’s way, but when a chance meeting with Petey, an old friend from the orphanage, leads to a reintroduction to Petey’s sister, Lori, Bono is persuaded to attend a Christmas Eve party. The narrator reminds Bono that he was always denied a share of the Christmas spirit, and this tradition continues as dancing couples part to allow the camera to focus on Bono sitting dejected on a sofa. A chink of light illuminates the darkness of Bono’s life when Lori invites him for Christmas lunch, but the door is closed on human contact again when he almost forces himself upon her.

Though this diversion has threatened to derail Bono’s plans – he even calls his Cleveland bosses to plead with them to take him off the job – Troiano’s killing is well planned and executed. As the victim walks down the long hallway of his mistress’s apartment we see his killer’s shadow against the wall; light, shade and low-angle framing combine for a brutal assassination.

A noteworthy low-budget addition to the crime genre, Baron’s film focuses mostly on the killer’s tortured soul describing a wretched life from birth to his final hours; the memorable opening sequence of Bono’s train emerging screeching from a long tunnel enforces this existential pain. We find ourselves willing him towards making a moral decision, but the opportunities offered do little to draw him away from the clutches of mob life. The final sequence, shot on Long Island as Hurricane Donna raged, adds an elemental dénouement. Though the film succeeds as a muscular character-driven thriller, Baron’s work for the cinema was sparse. He was ghettoised into TV direction for the majority of his career, a loss to the cinema industry of the Sixties. From the fitfully intense energy on display here, he could have developed into a robust presence behind the camera.

Clark Hodgkiss