Blast of Silence

"Blast of Silence", written and directed by and starring Allen Baron and released in 1961 is a low-budget, independent crime thriller made in New York. The story is about Frankie Bono, a heartless and perfectionist professional killer who begins to develop a conscience and decides that maybe he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life alone after all while trailing his next target.
Allen Baron, who also wrote and directed this debut film, stars as the hit man. The cast is minimal, the only other really significant characters being the sleazy mobster he is supposed to assassinate and Laurie, a girl he grew up with in an orphanage who he runs into by chance and starts to spend time with. Laurie is a mousy, apologetic woman who reminds me of Talia Shire's character in "Rocky". She is the only glimmer of hope for Frankie, whose existence and continued success in his chosen profession depends on his secrecy and willingness to be alone.
The film is very independent, and its tiny budget is evident without being distracting. The entire film is shot on location in New York, which is one of the main attractions of the film. The cinematography is beautiful and striking, reminiscent of Raoul Coutard's photography of Paris in the early, black-and-white Godard features but with a more restrained and deliberate sense of composition. (Baron was a visual artist and illustrator before becoming interested in film-making, and it is evident in many of the shots, especially in a quiet sequence in which Frankie reverently cleans and loads his pistol.) Some of the locations look very different -- like 125th street -- and some are virtually unchanged, like the small alley called Commerce Street in the West Village. Some of the other striking locations are Rockefeller Center, where Frankie walks without interest past the giant Christmas tree, and the swamps and marshes of Jamaica Bay, where the film's climax takes place. The film also boasts a dynamic and exciting original jazz score that goes back and forth between suspenseful brassy big band music and sexy small-group jazz with a great vibraphone part.
The most memorable aspect of the film is the narration, read by the unmistakable voice of character actor Lionel Stander. The voice appears to be an omniscient third person, but he frequently refers to the main character as "you" and addresses him specifically, adding subjective interpretations (like "You begin to hate him. You could kill him right now with pleasure."). It becomes evident through the narrator's stream-of-consciousness nature that the voice functions as more of an inner dialogue for Frankie, who would never discuss any of these feelings with anyone else for fear of coming across as weak. The nearly constant inner dialogue with the narrator adds a great deal to the somewhat traditional noir plot and is unlike any other voice-over narration I have ever heard. The film, with the aid of the narration, becomes very philosophical, especially in its final lines, which are textbook existentialism.
Overall, the film reminds me of a more polished and well-written version of Stanley Kubrick's early film "Killer's Kiss". The opening is exactly the same, and both films share a similar look (the secret, candid street photography and raw location shooting, also similar to such classic noir films as "The Naked City"). The plot is different but the feeling is the same; both films are about isolated male anti-heroes having crises of morality. However, the protagonist in Baron's film is infinitely more complex, and the film commits much more to probing his conscience than it does to creating a suspenseful story the way that Kubrick does. "Blast of Silence" is a very compelling post-noir independent masterpiece.