GOLDEN GRAHAMS

Editor-at-Large Jamie Graham unearths underrated classics…

THIS MONTH Murder by Contract and Blast of Silence

Iwrite this at the end of November, or Noirvember as it was for me, as I watched a film noir every day of the month, mostly from the classic period (1941-1958). Some were rewatches of recognised masterpieces: The Maltese Falcon, Laura, Double Indemnity, Detour, The Big Sleep, Out of the Past, In a Lonely Place, Sunset Blvd., The Big Heat, Kiss Me Deadly, Touch of Evil, etc. But mainly I tried to seek out lesser-known entries, for the 40s and 50s – scarred by the Great Depression and World War Two – were stacked with these poetic, cynical, shadowdrenched crime thrillers, in which toughtalking guys and duplicitous dames mashed lips and murky morals.

In the dark, dark corners, I discovered several gems, such as Don Siegel’s brutal The Lineup, Jacques Tourneur’s slippery Nightfall and Phil Karlson’s authentically gritty The Phenix City Story. But two stood out: Irving Lerner’s Murder by Contract (1958) and Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence (1961). Both, as it happens, are concerned with killers for hire. And both, I found out later, are revered by Martin Scorsese.

Murder by Contract sees smart, capable Claude (Vince Edwards) establish himself as an efficient assassin. With two brilliantly executed jobs under his belt, he’s rewarded with a big assignment in LA – to terminate a witness who’s about to testify against a mobster. The witness is under heavy FBI guard. Claude can deal with that. What he doesn’t like is that the witness is a woman. Is there a patch of warmth in that chunk of ice where his heart should be? Nah, he just thinks dolls are ‘unpredictable’, liable to screw up his best-laid plans with their scatty behaviour.

Blast of Silence, meanwhile, has Cleveland killer Frank Bono (played by director Baron) sent to New York to cancel a second-string mob boss. Frank is painstakingly detailed, tracking his mark’s movements. He’s also callous and fucked-up. ‘You were born into pain,’ says the voiceover, which, unusually, is in the second person. ‘You were born with hate and anger built in.’ Nothing can stop Frank, or put him off his game. Until, that is, he fatefully bumps into a woman from his distant past…

Blast of Silence’s unvarnished narration, tortured philosophising and warped mindset

See these if you liked…

POINT BLANK 1967

Double-crossed and left for dead, Lee Marvin’s Walker implacably treads the road to revenge.

TAXI DRIVER 1976

The influences are clear: Travis Bickle’s twisted mind, Scorsese’s use of found locations, and fever-dream waves of expressionistic flourishes…

COLLATERAL 2004

Tom Cruise excels as assassin Vincent, cruising the mean streets of LA in Michael Mann’s stylish neo-noir.

THE KILLER 2023s

Fincher’s controlled study of a contract killer owes a huge debt to Murder by Contract and Blast of Silence.

ONE M O R E… CRY OF THE CITY 1948 Robert Siodmak’s NYC noir about friends on the opposite side of the law is another Scorsese fave.

surely guided Paul Schrader and

Scorsese when they made Taxi Driver. Likewise, Marty adores Murder by Contract, saying, ‘It’s the film that influenced me the most.’ He praises its ‘economy of style’, and it was shot in just seven days, with the camera placement and framing screaming detachment and moral emptiness.

Blast of Silence packs more into its frames but it’s cluttered filth, the detritus on display reflecting a psychology that is sullied and ugly. Baron shot in New York without a permit for 22 days over a four-month period, putting friends and family in background roles, and filming the climax during a real-life hurricane to add production value. The scene takes place in a location that was said to be a real-life dumping ground for mob hits.

Both of these gloriously savage movies were years ahead of their time, offering tours around a killer’s mind with no safety rails to cling to. So next time you see a list of the greatest noirs and it comprises all the usual suspects, remember these. They’re number one with a bullet.

JAMIE WILL RETURN NEXT ISSUE… FOR MORE RECOMMENDATIONS, FOLLOW @JAMIE_GRAHAM9 ON TWITTER/X ALAMY