Blast of Silence

One of many unique aspects of Allen Baron’s independently produced, minimally budgeted Blast of Silence is a voice-over narration (spoken by actor Lionel Stander) in second person point of view as if protagonist Frankie Bono’s conscience is speaking to him directly (“You were born full of hate”). Played by Baron himself, Frankie is a lonely, depressed hit man returning to his home town of New York City from Cleveland for his latest hit, a gangster named Troiano (Peter Clune) who lives in the suburbs but regularly meets a mistress in the city, usually accompanied by two bodyguards. Meeting up with his old contacts — slovenly gun runner Big Ralph (Larry Tucker), childhood friend Petey (Danny Meehan), and old flame Lori (Molly McCarthy) whom Frankie awkwardly assaults as a misguided act of love — and walking the Manhattan streets at night (we see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, the Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village), Frankie loses his nerve and tries unsuccessfully to cancel the contract. With scenes in cramped apartments and questionable jazz clubs, Baron’s New York is authentic and raw, offering a glimpse of the gritty Gotham that would explode more than a decade later in Scorsese’s revolutionary films, Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976). Brody’s camera tails Frankie as he walks and stalks the city’s streets at night, often from unusual angles, especially a long shot in which the distant, trenchcoated Frankie walks the length of a city block toward the camera until he arrives just in front of the lens.