Baby Boy Frankie

Saw this one a few weeks back on the big screen at the American Cinematheque and it has stayed w/ me. Baron was about as short and homely as leading men get but somehow in this bleak and uncompromising piece he's effective (particularly in voice-over). Some striking cinematography (especially the wonderful opening train sequence) and a few long takes (Baron walking an entire rundown city block of a sidewalk with no other business, the stirring snowy pier finale) are memorable. Also good is the sleazy fat bearded character actor whose name escapes me (he also appeared in Fuller's SHOCK CORRIDOR around the same time).

There isn't a lot of humanity in BOS though, and the one moment when Baron opens up to the girl he has befriended, he gets slapped hard with cold reality. A well done scene but it only piles on to the disaffection and malaise already permeating this movie. Don't expect to laugh much or take a date; the proceedings rarely stray from deadly serious. This is a movie full of lapsed morals and betrayal but you can take heart that the system remains firmly in control at the chilling end of this downbeat but solid late entry in the noir cycle.

Blast of Silence (1961)

In some ways, the filming and the cool grey timbre of this film are so singular and evocative, you really have to watch it. In this way it reminded me of a gritty, New York version of the 1958 Elevator to the Gallows (set in Paris). They both have some of the most beautiful, evocative scenes of people just walking the streets of the city, day and night. In "Blast of Silence" you get taken to several parts of New York, unedited, shot with a simple but elegant intuition for the place. This is a movie by New Yorkers about New York.

But the plot, about a lone killer on his last dubious assignment, is a strain. Beyond the convincing despondency and isolation of the leading actor (Allen Baron, from Brooklyn, who is also the director), the cast struggles to be relevant. The one other shining performance is the gun dealing and rat lover, played by Larry Tucker with a kind of relish for the unsavory dirty aspects of his part. Great stuff.

If you accept that the story isn't much, by itself, and watch it for the scenes of the city, for the impressions of ordinary New Yorkers at the time of Kennedy's election, you will be really wowed. Right from the first shot, the low budget hand held camera on a train in a tunnel, going on and on until finally finding the light of day, to the last scenes in a a light, windy, driven snow in the Meadowlands, it's a thrilling, original ride. The filming has a gritty, everyman quality that seems to come right from art school without the affectation. It really is worth it just for the scenes, and the urban scenery.

Yeah, rememberin' da time when you was a kid and saw this movie on late night TV. Even then you was wise that it was a shabby-lookin' lowdown no-budget job and the cast was not so good lookin' -- but that's OK, you liked it that way. These was the kinda people you could see all around you, every day in da neighborhood, downtown, on the street corner, in the subway. Yeah, this looked like life in the city, but wit' a special kinda danger, a certain mystery. You ain't never forgot this movie, didja? Oh, you didn't remember what it was called or who was in it, but it stuck wit' ya and bounced around yer brain like the beatin' of a conga drum in a Greenwich Village beatnik club. Didn't think it would ever catch up with ya, didja?

Ya seen it again tonight, huh? The actin' still ain't so great and the people still ain't so good-lookin'. But that's OK, 'cause it's still the coolest damn thing ya ever seen. Ahh, Hollywood is for saps. You want somethin' gritty and dark, don't ya? 'Cause that's the way you like it.

Rememberin'.

Someone resurrect this 'lost classic' hardboiled noir! Director/Writer/Lead Actor Allen Baron (whose subsequent career took him into TV-land with the likes of CHARLIE'S ANGELS) turned out this bleak film noir in 1961, and it must surely rate as one of the all-time genre downers (and that's intended as a compliment!). Similar in tone to Irving Lerner's earlier MURDER BY CONTRACT (another must-see!), this features a protracted, yet stunningly appropriate, opening tracking shot through a railway tunnel as an early morning train spits Ohio-based contract assassin Frankie Bono (Baron) out into a wintry New York to carry out a Christmas holiday hit on a second-tier racketeer but, as in MURDER BY CONTRACT, all the meticulous planning and methodical preparation becomes unravelled as fate and his malevolent (and often unseen) criminal fraternity deal Frankie a crueller hand than the one he'd planned for his unsuspecting quarry. OK, nothing new here, but the tone, something like a cross between the cruel randomness of a Cornell Woolrich story (read this guy!) mated with an existentialist and angst-ridden take on the 'We're born in pain, We die alone' school of genre filmmaking, means that you'd need to take in a couple of Abel Ferrara movies like THE DRILLER KILLER and BAD LIEUTENANT to get your jollies after watching this one. Oh yeah, and it's topped off by a pitiless world-weary hardboiled third-person narration which ratchets up the ominous atmospherics that all the doomy foreshadowing brings to this dance of death (example - when Bono tracks his would-be victim to The Village Gate, the jazzy soundtrack switches to a beatnik vocalist/conga-drummer whose set consists solely of death-themed numbers). Atmospheric lengthy takes, often featuring a behatted and raincoated (or alternately dark-suited) Bono stalking the mean streets of the Big Apple dwarfed by the concrete jungle cityscape evoke and prefigure both Marvin in POINT BLANK and Delon in Melville's LE SAMOURAI, and his ruthlessly downbeat demeanour also recalls Henry Silva in the similarly ruthless (and elusive) JOHNNY COOL (see my IMDB review for more on this one - shameless plug!). This may be (by now) an oft-told tale, but what we have here is a true low-budget one-off for fans of the lower depths, and there's even a sweaty, weighty (excuse the pun) and telling cameo from Larry Tucker (Pagliacci in Fuller's 'SHOCK CORRIDOR') for cultists to take in amongst the no-name cast. A must-see - if you get a chance to see it.

This B& W film, set in New York uses its locations and actors with great skill. The sound editing is very effective and adds moments of tension to the atypically dark contrasty lighting. One shot of an exterior street is enormously powerful without any action beside the cityscape. The director has a great eye - not as good at acting as directing though. If you like film noir - this low budget film is worthy of your viewing.