DVD of the Week: “Blast of Silence”

Allen Baron’s low-budget 1961 film noir, “Blast of Silence” (which I discuss in this clip), was his first feature, and though it wasn’t his last, it didn’t launch the career that Baron deserved. For those who look back with nostalgia at an earlier age of criticism, Baron’s fate—decades of directing episodes of such TV shows as “Love, American Style” and “The Love Boat”—should suggest the narrow line of cinematic achievement that could pass through the gates. If “Blast of Silence” had come out, even in severely limited release, in an age that boasted as many perceptive, knowledgeable, and industrious critics as there are today (many of whom are working largely online) and the rapidly echoing electronic media by which their word gets out, Baron would likely have had the chance to build a body of work and to expand his artistry—and if the cinematic landscape were more like that of our time, he wouldn’t have been confined to genre productions. Between 1964 and 1982, he made three more features (none of which I’ve seen, and none of which I’ve ever noticed playing in revival). Baron is in his mid-eighties and, according to his Web site, “currently lives and works in Beverly Hills as a full time painter.” I can hardly imagine, after seeing his extraordinarily imaginative first feature, the frustrations and involuted, ingrown, or just plain stifled inventions that have been working him over from within for the past half century. And I wish that he could make the movie now that would let us know.

P.S. I noted, in the credits to the film, that the camera operator is Erich Kollmar, who also worked with John Cassavetes on “Shadows.” Had Cassavetes not had a career as an actor, he’d have had even more trouble getting his movies made, released, and considered. Look, for instance, at Barbara Loden’s “Wanda”—another overlooked great movie that should have launched its director’s career.