Multi-layered jazz, 60’s era nightclubs, hidden swastikas, sweaty Village apartments, Rockefeller Center at Christmas… the score, compositions, strong chiaroscuro and the juxtapositon of characters in unusual environments set an edgy, doomed mood in Blast of Silence (1961). Hitman Frankie Bono watches children from a high story window, or tracks his victim from a rooftop, shot from the street, framed against the sky in silhouette, a god of New York. He thinks “You coulda been an engineer” but he chose to be a murderer. There’s an essential disconnect between what you are and what you think you could have been, should have been, are above, beneath, or beyond.
More:
Blast of Silence 428, Criterion Confessions, Jamie S. Rich