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Orchestrated by:
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Arthur Morton
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Labels and Dates:
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Goldsmith Society (Limited)
(1991)
Silva Screen
(1992)
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Availability:
The 1991 Goldsmith Society album (#1) was limited to 500 copies, each hand numbered. The Silva album released in 1992 was a regular commercial product and diminished the Goldsmith Society album to below $50 (as a novelty item only).
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... only if you seek a complete collection of Jerry Goldsmith's
action music, including the more hasty and less interesting variety defined
by this score.
Avoid it... if you expect consistent action rhythms, pronounced
melodies, or the vibrant sound quality that often propels the brass and
percussion in this Goldsmith's genre.
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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| | Goldsmith | |
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Twilight's Last Gleaming: (Jerry Goldsmith) The
American public wasn't yet quite ready to accept the anti-Vietnam,
anti-government messages in 1977's Twilight's Last Gleaming, and the
film was a major contribution to the sinking of director Robert Aldrich's
career. Despite the fact that the Pentagon Papers, released in 1971, said
everything that Aldrich was trying to use to outrage the American public,
one of Twilight's Last Gleaming's plotlines (and the politically
motivating one) involves the notion that terrorists from within the American
military could force the U.S. president to admit to all the faulty policies
behind the Vietnam war... without even mentioning the war by name in the
first two hours of the film. The other plotline in the film involves a
typical action line that depicts Burt Lancaster as a former military general
who, along with two cohorts (including Paul Winfield), sneaks into a missile
silo in Montana and threatens to launch its nine nuclear missiles on the
Soviet Union. Unless the government admits to its failings, of course.
Response to the film was similar to the response by the public to Vietnam in
the late 1970's; people just accepted the government was faulty and didn't
need to see someone take over missile silos in order to force the government
to expose its own evils. For the purposes of the score, Aldrich had wanted
to hire his usual collaborator, Frank De Vol, for Twilight's Last
Gleaming. The tandem that had produced Flight of the Pheonix,
however, was disrupted by an illness that struck De Vol, and Jerry
Goldsmith, who had always wanted to compose for an Aldrich film, was brought
in at the last minute to provide the music. He completed the score in almost
record speed, and later revealed that did not even have time in his schedule
to oversee the dubbing process. Consequently, the score was chopped up
considerably in the final product, and Goldsmith admitted that the score was
not used in the film as he would have liked.
The resulting soundtrack is somewhat underdeveloped,
considering the tension and grand geo-political issues discussed in the
film. Let's not forget, also, that Twilight's Last Gleaming is an
action thriller as well, and Goldsmith's handling of this genre is also
lacking in the film. The score is a cross between Capricorn One and
Seven Days in May, very militaristic in drive, and relies heavily on
the percussion section. For lengthy sequences, the snare and bass drums will
maintain a staggered rhythm while harsh brass perform simple, typical
Goldsmith motifs on the top. For the General McKenzie's character (leading
the government's side), Goldsmith offers some faint echoes of the trumpet
heroics of Patton and MacArthur, including a few recognizable
two-note trumpet alternations from the former score. After meandering with
very subdued drum beats for the sneaking sections at the outset, as well as
a short, soft, and underdeveloped woodwind theme in "A Reflective
Interlude," Goldsmith finally starts to establish satisfying action rhythms
with the whole ensemble in "Operation Gold Begins." In "The Tanks,"
Goldsmith previews some of the stock action material that would define his
career in the mid-1990's, although punctuated nicely here by distinct piano
strikes in the bass ranges. In the final moments, however, Goldsmith allows
the score dissolve once again into a tangled mess of snare rips, singular
blasts from the brass section, and no melody worth speaking of. Because of
the failure of the film at its outset, a release of its music was a longtime
in the coming. Many of the original tapes of the score had gone missing
before it was determined that Goldsmith's son Joel was in possession of
them. It was finally released in 1991 as the debut CD album of The Goldsmith
Society, with a limited run of only 500 albums produced. Just after this
product created a fuss with the Goldsmith collectors, the Silva Screen label
released the identical contents in regular commercial form the following
year. Both versions suffer from archival sound issues, which especially hurt
the cause of the percussion in the score. Overall, even if you are a
collector of Goldsmith's superior action writing of the early-1980's,
Twilight's Last Gleaming is a much less developed and far less
interesting sibling of those efforts. **
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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Track Listings (Both Albums):
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Total Time: 38:33
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• 1. Silo 3/The Takeover (3:34)
• 2. General McKenzie Arrives (1:11)
• 3. "He Has Launch Control"/Special Forces Arrive (3:41)
• 4. The Bubble (2:57)
• 5. Nuclear Nightmare (3:15)
• 6. A Reflective Interlude (1:26)
• 7. "After You Mr President"/Heading for Home/The President Falls (2:34)
• 8. The Taking of Silo 3 (3:27)
• 9. Operation Gold Begins/Watching and Waiting (3:17)
• 10. The Tanks (3:40)
• 11. Down the Elevator Shaft/The Gold Bomb (2:14)
• 12. Gold Team Enters Silo 3 (4:56)
• 13. The Final Betrayal (1:58)
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Both albums contain basic information about the score.
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