Blast of Silence

Frankie comes to New York from Cleveland. It is Christmas Eve. He has a job: to kill a man and go back. Fitting the gun, watching the target, learning his habits and waiting for the moment; all of it planned. He speaks to nobody in the city. Then he runs into an old acquaintance and goes to a party, where there is a woman he knew as a child. The plan does not break, and Frankie begins to. Allen Baron wrote, directed and takes the lead. It was made for very little money with a small crew and shot without permits on the streets of New York; the people passing in the crowd scenes did not know they were being filmed. Its best known feature is the narration. The narrator speaks in the second person and addresses the character continuously; the voice stands not as his own thought but as something said to him from outside. The writer of that text was blacklisted at the time and his name was not used in the credits; the name of the actor who read it was also withheld for years. The narrative is a late example of noir and reduces the genre to its plainest form: a man, a job and a city. The Christmas season has a function; the city is crowded and cheerful and the character is entirely alone. Who it is for: viewers who like noir and low budget independent production. Who it is not for: the technical quality is raw, the acting is limited, and the narrative is very short.