At the beginning of Blast of Silence (1961, Allen Baron), a white dot bounces around the black screen. BIRTH. “You’re a loner,” the voice-over decrees.

Applying the work of Michel Chion to Blast of Silence is as simple as taking into account the very name of the film. Like this moment before Frank’s “blast” into the world at birth, the film is full of sharp and pointed silences, which in themselves work to prove Chion’s theory of acousmatic sound.

Chion asserts that silent cinema is in fact not silent. Information is communicated through intertitles. Though Blast of Silence is not a silent film, it still uses specific techniques to create instances in which sound is present in the diegesis, but not present to the audience. In the diegesis of a film, sound can be there—we just may not necessarily hear it.

Entering an apartment building, Frank leers expectedly up the stairs, a spotlight shining directly on his face. The only sound at this moment is the jazzy theme music that persists loudly throughout the film. In this way, silence works in place of off-screen diegetic sound. His facial expression reacts to the silence up the stairway, thus we are induced to wonder what’s up there. And sure enough, the next step he takes is up—up to where the silence is so we can see it for ourselves.

Similarly, after he commits his second killing and has made it down the fire escape and into the street, there is a moment when sound is absent—but intense. Two men sit in a parked car, seemingly watching for Frank. In a very precise moment, Frank walks by, and the driver spots him. Immediately following, the passenger clearly says something to his partner—but we do not hear what he says. The words themselves are missing, causing a deeply rooted intrigue in the audience members.

According to Chion, acousmatic sound is a desire-generator, much like the “objet a” found in the works of Jacques Lacan. In this film, desire is generated not by sources of sound unseen, but by sound seen—and unheard.

Near the beginning of Michel Chion’s essay “Projections of Sound on Image,” he describes the effect of redundant commentary upon the viewer of moving images, using a French anchorman’s gaffe as evidence. Chion states:

In any case, the evanescent film image does not give us much time to look, unlike a painting on a wall or a photograph in a book that we can explore at our own pace and more easily detach from their captions or their commentary. Thus if the film or TV image seems to “speak” for itself, it is actually a ventriloquist’s speech. When the shot of the three small airplanes in a blue sky declares “three small airplanes,” it is a puppet animated by the anchorman’s voice. (114)

However, while Allen Baron’s 1960 film Blast of Silence overtly relies on the presence of a ventriloquist-like narrator, the film does not possess the redundant characteristics that Chion would expect it to exude. The narrator in Blast of Silence certainly spells out the action that is appearing on screen, serving as a second-person caption to the film images. When the main character Frankie Bono (Allen Baron) walks the streets of New York, the narrator explicitly repeats the story that the images tell. Yet the narrator never becomes redundant, because he vocalizes Frankie’s conscious and unconscious thoughts, rather than a typical omniscient narrator who provides all angles of the story for the audience’s benefit. For example, when Frankie walks the streets of Manhattan past the stores and the various Christmas window decorations, the narrator directly mentions, “Christmas gives you the creeps.” Here, the narrator does not provide redundant information that the audience could deduce from the on-screen image, but rather he dispenses crucial information to the understanding of Frankie, a loner who despises even the most beloved of holidays.

Of course, the narrator in Blast of Silence many times emulates Chion’s French anchorman, especially when he merely vocalizes the on-screen images. However, the narrator could not accurately be described as a filmic ventriloquist, because he often provides valuable insight into the Frankie’s mind that could never be deduced from simply viewing the film.

Allen Baron (both director and "'Baby Boy' Frankie Bono") makes Blast of Silence (1961) a memorable film with two of the most unusual scenes in film history—the simultaneously advancing/retracting extended opening shot of a key-hole shaped alienish apparition (Frankie coming into the world) and the post-murder image of Frankie Bono after murdering Ralph —Larry Tucker (Frankie’s plot-point-two life moment). These two images form a metaphor for Frankie’s life; reaching mid-level hit-man status, he fluctuates between crime and domesticity. When he realizes that he can push peanuts with the best of ‘em, he stagnates in moral crisis.

The voice of God’s gruff snarly narration provides what Chion terms “added value.” Chion contrasts the transient “evanescent” nature of film to a 2-dimensional work of art.

The narrator and its postmodern use of sound makes the film perhaps even more memorable than the details of the film—it frames the film. How did Troiano (Peter Clume) die? We remember after thinking for a moment, but what stands out is the narrator’s brilliant comment that (Troiano) “has a mustache to hide the fact that he has lips like a woman.”

Other unforgettable “smart” lines serve to further character development. The narrator’s dialogue functions as Frankie’s consciousness. . .the running commentary is akin to Virginia Woolf's and James Joyce’s stream of consciousness style of writing. The film fleshes out Frankie’s mundane lifestyle—could this guy be anymore deadpan or bland? The narrator gives us a leg-up—spelling out things that we can obviously see. Frankie cannot communicate with women; he had a bad home life; at any moment he might come unhinged; he prefers to live a solitary life. The narration is both necessary and unnecessary (and postmodern) at the same time.

In Allen Baron’s 1961 crime thriller Blast of Silence, the soundtrack is used not only as an enhancement to the image, but as the director’s way of telling the audience what to think and feel about what is being portrayed on screen. The most obvious difference between Blast of Silence’s soundtrack and the soundtracks of other films is the “Voice of God” narration that is used throughout. Not only does this narration give what Michel Chion outlines as “added value” to the film by enriching the given image and creating a definite impression, but it also structures the vision of the audience.

This structural influence is illustrated by Chion in a synopsis of a 1984 television broadcast when Léon Zitrone affirms the image of three small planes flying behind him by stating, “Here are three small planes.” This statement seemed painfully obvious to the audience at the time, but as Chion points out, Zitrone could have said, “The weather is magnificent today,” or, “Where did the fourth plane go?”—and the audience would have noticed these statements as “obvious” as well. Chion notes that each of these statements has illusory redundancy because “in each case these statements would have guided and structured our vision so that we would have seen them ‘naturally’ in the image” (FaT, 113). With this, Blast of Silence’s voiceover narration is the ultimate way for Baron to ensure that the audience is thinking exactly what they should be thinking. With the narrator (Lionel Stander) “talking to” Frank Bono (Allen Baron), the audience is able to understand more than they would have without the narration. The voiceover allows the director to tell the audience what to think and feel without them questioning his motives.

Another clever way sound is used in Blast of Silence is its use of jazz music. Though jazz may not seem too out of the norm for a crime thriller, the way it is used once again allows the director to directly influence the audience’s emotions. Baron’s use of jazz music in the scene when Frankie (Baron) murders Big Ralph (Larry Tucker) creates huge amounts of tension simply because of its seemingly indifferent nature to what is happening on screen. As Chion states, “[When] a scene takes place against this very backdrop of ‘indifference’… [It] has the effect of not freezing emotion but rather of intensifying it, by inscribing it on a cosmic background” (114). Therefore, because the upbeat and intense jazz music seems so out of place in the murder scene, the audience is affected more by the scene than had there been different or no music playing. This anempathetic music enhances the emotions of the character and audience even though the music itself does not recognize that they are present.

In the essay "Projections of Sound on Image" by Michel Chion, the author discusses how sound can affect cinema. One of his major points is how music can add value to cinema. In this part of the essay he discusses two terms—empathetic and anempathetic. Chion says empathetic music "can directly express its participation in the feeling of the scene, by taking on the scene's rhythm, tone, and phrasing" while anempathetic music "can also exhibit conspicuous indifference to the situation, by progressing in a steady, undaunted, and ineluctable manner" (114). Empathetic music is related to the scene; in a way, this type of music expresses the emotions of the characters or intensity in the scene. Anempathetic music is indifferent to the scene, more background music than anything else, but this music has a way of making the reader focus on the scene by intensifying it. Both of these ideas can be seen in the 1961 movie Blast of Silence (Allen Baron).

Several scenes in Blast of Silence reflect Chion's theories on music in cinema. There are two scenes in particular which can be used to express empathetic and anempathetic music.

The first scene is an expression of empathetic music. Frank Bono (Allen Baron) walks out of the club after watching Troiano (Peter Clume) and being cornered by Big Ralph (Larry Tucker). During this scene Frank pursues Big Ralph. The music slowly starts as the audience realizes there is a chase going on but builds as the pursuit intensifies. The music stops suddenly when they reach Big Ralph's apartment and begins to build up again as Frank picks up the fire axe; the audience realizes the he is going to use it to kill Big Ralph. The music breaks out into a flurry of sound as Frank takes the first swing and then Big Ralph and Frank fight until Big Ralph dies. When he dies the music dies as well. This music shows the intensity of the scene and the emotion that Frank is feeling. This scene is a clear illustration of Chion's theory of empathetic music.

The next scene in which the music ignores the action going on is the scene that takes place on Christmas night. Frank goes to visit Lorrie (Molly McCarthy) and, during this scene, the audience hears Christmas music while they are talking over dinner. Frank then kisses her and attempts to take advantage of her against her will. The Christmas music appears to be in scene because it does not change when the action intensifies during the kiss and subsequent attempted rape. This music is clearly anempathetic because it does not go with the emotion of the scene, nor that of the characters.

Michel Chion's theories on sound are overtly apparent throughout the movies Blast of Silence, especially his theory on music. His ideas on empathetic and anempathetic music appear frequently throughout the movie and in a way narrate the scene as it progresses.

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