Part of Restoration Roundup and Holiday Classics
All Screenings: Pre-recorded introduction from film historian and critic Alonso Duralde, author of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas and Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film
Swift, brutal, and blackhearted, Allen Baron’s New York City noir BLAST OF SILENCE is a sensational surprise. This low-budget, carefully crafted portrait of a hit man on assignment in Manhattan during Christmastime follows its stripped-down narrative with mechanical precision, yet also with an eye and ear for the oddball details of urban living and the imposing beauty of the city. At once visually ragged and artfully composed, and featuring rough, poetic narration performed by Lionel Stander and written by Waldo Salt (both uncredited), BLAST OF SILENCE is a stylish triumph.
“The movie would work if it weren’t set at Christmas, but the holiday cheer ratchets up the sense of alienation and despair. Not everyone is destined to have happy holidays. Some might not even make it out alive.” —Keith Phipps, Vulture “One of the greatest of New York movies…it compresses a week in a hit man’s bitter life into a dazzlingly brisk yet richly nuanced drama.” —Richard Brody, New Yorker “With its finger-popping jazz score and beat-inspired interior monologue (in second person, no less), this might seem comical if it weren’t so rooted in existential dread.” —J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader
