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| Goldsmith |
The Chairman: (Jerry Goldsmith) In one of the more
interesting cinematic depictions of China's Mao Zedong, the 1969 movie
The Chairman postulates that the leader has his hands on an
enzyme that could allow crops to grow in all sorts of climates. An agent
representing America and Great Britain travels to China to receive this
breakthrough, and he looks suspiciously like Gregory Peck. Unbeknownst
to him, though, the Western powers that surgically installed a
communications tracker in his head also courteously embedded a bomb in
there, too. When the agent manages to get remarkably close to the
suspiciously cooperative Mao, the handlers back in London must decide if
they want to continue with the mission to get the enzyme's formula or
blow up the agent and Mao at the same time. That dilemma is complicated
by Chinese security forces trying to stop the enzyme's transfer. There's
a beautiful female agent on the Chinese side, of course, and the agent
eventually finds himself on the run and needing help from the Soviets to
escape with the formula and his head intact. The production attempted to
achieve authenticity by filming in Hong Kong but was eventually harassed
out of the city and compelled to use guerrilla filming in the area
instead. Not even the star power of Peck could save
The Chairman
in theaters, as it lost millions and faded into obscurity. Composer
Jerry Goldsmith was embarking upon the start of a fruitful collaboration
with director J. Lee Thompson at the time, and he had already scored a
variety of films that contained an Oriental flavor. His approach to
The Chairman blends the conventions of Western action thrillers
and dramas with a bevy of Eastern instrumental accents, yielding results
akin to
The Spiral Road,
The Sand Pebbles, and all the way
through
Mulan. The composer was comfortable generating these
ethnic tones against a robust orchestral backdrop, and
The
Chairman remains primarily a symphonic thriller with some difficult
atonal suspense at its heart. There isn't a tremendous amount of music
placed into the picture, and while the final chase sequence towards the
Russian border is nonstop action, don't expect it to compete with the
composer's later equivalents.
The duty of supplying a convincing Chinese sound to
The
Chairman is in part reliant upon Goldsmith's structural applications
of Eastern music stereotypes, about which he did extensive research. The
employment of ethnic instrumentation is not as broadly scoped as one
might imagine, the composer's desire to employ a traditional Chinese
dulcimer, a yangqin, unfruitful. He instead turned to a cimbalom,
mandolin, and banjo to approximate the same sound as the most obvious
stylistic insertion. But the bulk of the location is represented by the
highly aggressive percussion assembled for the recording. The breadth of
especially the metallic percussion in
The Chairman is impressive,
with seemingly everything struck with reckless abandon during the action
cues. The various blocks, wind chimes, and gongs are joined by flute,
recorder, and harpsichord to provide additional depth of uniqueness.
Thematically,
The Chairman is completely dependent upon two
melodies that Goldsmith weaves into almost every cue of consequence. The
main theme represents China as an imposing march, a sinewy, cyclical
idea of relentless force and inherent Oriental structures. There are
tangential connections to alternating note figures later developed in
Under Fire. Introduced immediately in "Main Title" on the
dulcimer-like tones, this idea builds intensity as the cue progresses,
with a secondary fanfare for Mao as he is shown. It's a highly
impressive performance for the full ensemble, with notable overlapping
lines of activity. This main theme informs the light action thumping and
plucking in the second half of "A Late Visitor" before a thrashing harp
and woodwind explosion of dissonance explodes at the cue's end. The
theme's fanfare mode for Mao opens "The Tour" with magnificent force in
lyrical glory, a highlight of the score. The idea turns softer in that
scene but is still engaging on strings in the second half of the cue. It
explodes in disturbed, overblown layers of strings at the outset of "The
Red Guard," dissolving into ethnic ambience later in the cue, and it
informs at the edges of the suspense in "Escape." The theme evolves into
a raging action motif in the percussively dominant "Fire Fight,"
continuing that mode in "The Fence" with a greater role for the dulcimer
imitation tones for the pursuing Chinese forces and snare rhythms for
the Russians. Goldsmith reprises the main theme's full opening title
form in the latter half of "End Title."
The score's other identity is its love theme, a somewhat
anonymous idea that adjusts its ethnic character depending on which
woman the agent is with. Goldsmith's own piano performances in "The
World That Only Lovers See (Orchestral)" yield an attractive,
pop-oriented ambience overflowing with lush romanticism but suffers
serious sound quality issues on the original recording. It debuts in the
narrative with lightly pleasant waves of drama from strings and
woodwinds in "Goodbye for Now," and the slight hints of the Eastern
instrumentation are a nice anticipatory touch. The theme turns ominously
suspicious in "A Late Visitor" as the locale shifts to Hong Kong and
follows generic suspense strains on subdued oboe in "Soong Chu." It's
reserved in the melancholy "Hathaway's Farewell" with ethnic emphasis
before returning to oboe and is reprised on woodwinds at the start of
"End Title," where it builds to a stirring string conclusion. While
effective at their tasks, neither of Goldsmith's themes for
The
Chairman is spectacular, and only the more powerful renderings of
the Chinese march are truly worth exploring. The trio of "Main Title,"
"The Tour," and "End Title" make for a very worthy 8-minute suite of
highlights from the score. The remaining love theme and action cues are
comparatively pedestrian, and the ethnic instrumentation, while
admirably executed, cannot shine in the archival sound quality in which
it exists. There has never been a satisfying album release for the
original recording of
The Chairman, its album arrangement in
stereo long represented on substandard LP records and CDs. A 1991 Silva
Screen album pairing this score with Goldsmith's
Ransom is long
considered one of the worst-sounding soundtrack CD products ever
pressed. The same tracks were rearranged into film order and cleaned up
in 2005 by Prometheus Records, but severe archival sound quality issues
remain. A digital-only 2012 BSX Records expansion adds a single, brief
cue in monoaural sound, "The Marketplace," that is not significant but a
worthy rhythmic inclusion. That cue had been made available on
Varèse Sarabande's massive 2004 Jerry Goldsmith at 20th Century
Fox set, which included a 13-minute mono film version suite of music
from
The Chairman that suggests that the master tapes for the
entirety of the mono presentation of the film's music may be available
for release someday.
The 2012 BSX album lifts that one unique cue from the
2004 album's suite and also adds a couple of the label's own licensed
covers of the love theme. The Mark Northam piano solo for "The World
That Only Lovers See (For Solo Piano)" is fine, and a modern vocal cover
performed by Katie Campbell is fairly good despite some distracting
harmonic layering of the vocals. Ultimately, the best moments of
The
Chairman were always ripe for a re-recording with the appropriate
ethnic accents, and fans were treated to exactly that in 2025. A
successfully crowd-funded projected spearheaded by Intrada Records, the
re-recording of the entire score was executed by a number of Goldsmith
experts for a CD and digital release. With reconstruction by Leigh
Phillips, conducting by William T. Stromberg, and performances by the
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the score comes to life in excellent
sound quality featuring a careful mix emphasizing the eclectic
percussion far better than expected. The production values of this
effort are top notch, matching the re-recording of Goldsmith's
The
Salamander. Listeners accustomed to the album presentation of
The
Chairman will hear the score in a fuller arrangement with additional
music revealed. Among the added tracks are a quick string performance of
the love theme in "Old Times" for a removed scene, the tone redundant
with "Goodbye for Now." The march is adapted lightly with optimism in
"The City" above lively wood blocks. A purely vintage piece of jazz
source music in "The Strippers" enjoys extremely wet and bright
performance, in some ways the most entertaining music from the film. By
comparison, "House of Elegant Pleasure" is traditionally Chinese source
material of minimal interest. Lengthened to include suspenseful
variations on the march up front is "A Late Visitor," and "The Airport"
and "The Schools" are separated from album's "The Tour." Some of
"Hathaway's Farewell" is pushed forward into "The Red Guard," the early
subdued portions of "Soong Chu" are elongated in the oboe solos of "The
Bottle," and important is the full performance of the march with
percussive zeal in "The Students." Less interesting is the ambient
suspense of the new material in "The Laboratory," but the expansion of
the two "Hathaway's Plans" cues (formerly in contained in "Escape")
provides vital narrative flow as the climactic chase gets underway. The
propulsive anticipatory action cue "The Mine" is a nice addition, and
"The Fence" is renamed "The Russians Are Coming."
The later stages of the score are especially improved
by the chronological ordering, restoring the narrative to the
soundtrack. Dissonant percussion and woodwind wails in "The Countdown"
are accented by muscular brass before a resolution comes softly in "The
Bomb." The instrumental rendition in "The World Only Lovers See" is
somewhat flat in its muted, dry ambience, though its full ensemble
passage is impressive. With extra funds in hand, the album's producers
were able to add cues from several other Goldsmith scores to the
project. There is really no relation between these bonus tracks, a
somewhat oddball group representing favorites by the staff involved.
Perhaps the oddest selection is "Alex's Death" from
Under Fire, a
heavy action cue absent the score's most known themes outside of some
muted later portions. Completely different is the duo of "His Part/Bells
Someday" that makes a nicely tender representation of
Lilies of the
Field, the harmonica placement in this performance particularly
appealing. A wise inclusion is Goldsmith's demo of "End Credits" from
Rambo: First Blood Part II, which finally receives a proper
recording after never earning a place in the original soundtrack. Less
appealing is "The Flag" from
Not Without My Daughter, a good cue
but not one really in need of better sound quality. All of these tracks
are insignificant compared to Goldsmith's demo suite for
The Game of
Their Lives, the undeniable highlight of the whole album. The
composer had started writing ideas for the 2005 film when he succumbed
to cancer, and this recording provides three minutes of essentially
all-new Goldsmith music from the very end of his career. His melodies
may not be overwhelming in the demo, and the bass chords don't change to
harmonize with satisfaction, but the general idea is solid and could
have made for a really good score. (William Ross provided a replacement
that is well respected.) One of the intriguing aspects of these
re-recordings is that Phillips was able to replicate the exact synthetic
sounds used by Goldsmith throughout these re-recordings, as the
composer's sketches included the precise synths and their presets that
can still be replicated today. (Let's hope contemporary composers take
note and consider resurrecting them.) The 2025 product is an outstanding
treatment of
The Chairman, and the bonus tracks from
Rambo:
First Blood Part II and
The Game of Their Lives are extremely
welcomed. Only a Goldsmith completist should seek the original recording
of
The Chairman on its comparatively poor album options, as the
score isn't quite good enough to merit appreciation in such a
condition.
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- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on 1991-2012 Albums: ***
- Music as Heard on the 2025 Re-Recording: ****
- Overall: ***
| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.18
(in 150 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.21
(in 155,794 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The inserts of the albums for the original recording, including
the 2012 digital product from BSX, contain varying levels of notation
about the film and score. That of the 2025 Intrada album features
extensive information about both.
