Blast of Silence, Allen Baron, 1961

Baron's film, recently resurrected by Criterion, is the kind of hard bop psycho-noir that likely made the critics at Cahiers du Cinema swoon upon its release in 1961. Further, the film's angst-ridden hitman protagonist surely inspired scores of neo-noir anti heroes, most acutely John Cusak's Martin Blank in George Armitage's Grosse Point Blank, a role that suddenly seems strikingly derivative.