Ron Goodwin – “Al-mas' Ala Al-Kubra” aka “Clash Of Loyalties” (1983)
ABOUT THE FILM
“Clash Of Loyalties” (original working title: “The Great Question”), Arabic title: Al-mas' ala al-kubra (romanized; in English “The big issue”); the production was a 1983 Iraqi propaganda feature film focusing on the formation of the state of Iraq out of Mesopotamia in the aftermath of the First World War. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein wanted that such a film was made to the glory of his country. Two film versions were produced, a 170 minute Arab cut and a much shorter English version.
Oliver Reed was hired for the leading role. – The film needed a big western star to attract potential distributors in the West. – Reed plays the British Colonel Leachman opposite Ghazi al-Takriti as Dhari al-Mahmood.
Other cast members include: James Bolam as A. T. Wilson Helen Ryan as Gertrude Bell Yousef al-Any as Blind Leader Sami Abdul Hameed as Nationalist Leader (as Sami Abdul Hamid) Bernard Archard as Sir Percy Cox John Barron as General Haldane Helen Cherry as Lady Cox Barrie Cookson as Colonel Hardcastle Marc Sinden as Captain Dawson Michael Hordern can be heard as the narrator.
By the way, Marc Sinden was made an offer he couldn’t refuse by the British Government's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), appealing to his duty and his pride in Queen and Country. So the actor spied for MI6 during the filming of “Clash of Loyalties” in Iraq. Sindon later confirmed that the story was true.
Saddam Hussein saw to it that ‘his’ prestigious film project got lavishly financed. The dictator overlooked the production closely. A crew of British film people was hired to make sure the film wouldn’t fall short. Lateif Jorephani, an experienced London based film producer, was hired to, well, produce. But the whole enterprise was troubled not just because of the outbreak of the war between Iraq and Iran in 1980 during the pre-production phase. The Iraqi director Mohamed Shukri Jameel, who was hired to helm this epic picture, was actually not up to the task because he wasn’t experienced as a feature film director. When he came on board, he had only filmed a couple of documentaries.
Jack Hildyard was the director of photography. The shooting took about nine months, filming entirely in Iraq, mainly at the Baghdad Film Studios and in Baghdad's Mansour neighbourhood as well as on location at the Tigris-Euphrates marshlands, at the regions of Babylon and Kut; sometimes closely the war zone. Iraqi military once hit the film set with their artillery because they thought the Iranians had attacked a train, when, in fact, the crew shot an action scene of a railroad attack with lots of explosives in it.
Vic Armstrong was hired to oversee the stunts. The film is known for being the last made to use the now banned "Running W" technique, invented by Yakima Canutt. It’s a method of bringing down a horse at the gallop by attaching a wire, anchored to the ground, to its fetlocks, spectacularly launching the rider forwards. It either killed the horse, or, at best, it remained injured and was unrideable afterwards. The British stuntman Ken Buckle, trained by Canutt, performed the highly-dangerous and cruel stunt three times during the huge cavalry charge sequence. I’m not aware of if Armstrong who left the production prematurely approved of that horse killing technique or not.
After the wrap, the director cut the film in Bagdad and showed his version to Jorephani back in London. The producer considered that cut unusable and decided to rework the entire film from scratch. He had all the elements brought to England and had a completely new cut made with editor Bill Blunden that was finished after a couple of months. The new version was screened for Saddam Hussein back in Bagdad. The dictator was very pleased with the result. However, the film didn’t find any distributor in the West. It’s become kind of a lost film over the years. As of 2016, apparently, all the elements, including Ron Goodwin’s score still exist and are stored, i.e. rotting in rusty cans in one of Lateif Jorephani’s garages somewhere in Surrey. Hopefully the situation has improved since and the elements have now been stored in a safer location to stop the rotting.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
Enter Ron Goodwin. He was hired to score the film. A full blown symphonic work in Ron’s most bombastic style you could get. Why exactly he was chosen, I don’t know. Maybe others turned the offer down for whatever reasons they might have had. As I said before, Goodwin composed a monumental score for the picture. He conducted The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The film also features folk music and chants by Abdul Amir al-Saraf.
Ron Goodwin briefly remembers his work on the film in a 1989 interview by Christopher Ritchie.
Q: “What about CLASH OF LOYALTIES in 1983? It seems to have disappeared.” RG: “Well, it was a big hit in Baghdad. It was made by an Iraq company and they came to me to do the music and we recorded it at CTS Studios. I rather hoped they would have got it released in the West. Oliver Reed and James Bolam were in the cast. It was all about Iraq getting their independence from the British Empire. There was a lot of music in the film.”
In 1983, Ron Goodwin rerecorded a 6:25 minute suite from his score which was released on the EMI album “Projections” (EMS 1077691). The LP was released in the UK and in Europe. But a CD release has not come out as far as I can tell (there are conflicting data on that matter; but no CD release is listed on Discogs). I’m not sure if Goodwin’s recording stems from the original score or was newly recorded for the album. The suite is currently on YouTube:
Rumon Gamba also recorded a selection from Goodwin’s epic score for Chandos (CHAN 10262):
If you ask me, Goodwin’s version has far more bite than Gamba’s.
2016 DOCUMENTARY
You can watch an interesting documentary on the making of the film “Clash Of Loyalties”. It’s been part of a TV documentary series by Channel 4 called “Secret History”. The 47 minute episode in question is titled “Saddam Goes to Hollywood”, airing on 24 July 2016. It was directed by Stephen Finnigan who also co-produced.
The entire episode is in good quality on YouTube. There is a photo of Ron Goodwin (I think it must be him) in the booth together with a sound engineer, film producer Lateif Jorephani and a few others (at 40:23). Goodwin is only referenced to in this documentary by showing the main title credit card with his name on it and by playing snippets from his bombastic score.
Saddam Goes to Hollywood (2016)
FINAL THOUGHTS
Is there any interest in releasing the complete score? Does it still exist today?
I wonder if this assignment might have damaged Ron’s reputation, and, consequently no further offers were made to him for scoring another film. He would only score one other film in 1986. I’ve always felt his film composer career came to an end much too soon when he was only in his early sixties.
Well damn, based on that suite… SIGN ME UP. This sounds like PRIME Goodwin; hell in complete form it’s possible it might even dethrone Where Eagles Dare as my favorite score of his!
I want to hear it all!
This is the only one of Goodwin’s last five scores to not have a release. Who can we bug about it?
I wonder if this assignment might have damaged Ron’s reputation, and, consequently no further offers were made to him for scoring another film. He would only score one other film in 1986.
This both seems contradictory (since he did score another film)… and confusing. Why would a composer be penalized like this, while a high profile actor like Reed would have his career in films unaffected? I doubt many people even noticed or cared who wrote the music for this film, lol… and if there were really a stigma for Goodwin, why would he then include a suite on that album?
I also note that it had already been four years since Goodwin’s previous film composing assignment, Unidentified Flying Oddball, which I believe was his fifth (or sixth?) score for Disney (talk about a change of employer!) That’s a longer gap than the three year one between this score and his final score Valhalla. Maybe his career as a film composer was already winding down?
I wonder if this assignment might have damaged Ron’s reputation, and, consequently no further offers were made to him for scoring another film. He would only score one other film in 1986.
This both seems contradictory (since he did score another film)… and confusing. Why would a composer be penalized like this, while a high profile actor like Reed would have his career in films unaffected? I doubt many people even noticed or cared who wrote the music for this film, lol… and if there were really a stigma for Goodwin, why would he then include a suite on that album?
I also note that it had already been four years since Goodwin’s previous film composing assignment, Unidentified Flying Oddball, which I believe was his fifth (or sixth?) score for Disney (talk about a change of employer!) That’s a longer gap than the three year one between this score and his final score Valhalla. Maybe his career as a film composer was already winding down?
Yavar
Well, I might not have worded it perfectly. But I see you got the direction anyway.
His final 1986 Valhalla film score was for a relatively small-scale animated film which seemed to have come out of the left.
Based on the 1989 interveiw, you wouldn't get the impression that Goodwin actually considered himself as a retired film composer at that stage. He seemed open to other offers. The 1980s were still a decade where lavishly grand symphonic scores were in high demand. I don't think he was outdated at that time. So, I try to find the reason for the end of that filmcomposer career.
It is true that he already had slowed down his film score output before the Iraqi production came up. Whatever the reason might have been. I don't know nothing for sure about it and don't wont to speculate based on certain rumors I've read over the years. I'm sure a couple of folks in the know have more firm info about it. By the way, so far it's not clear in what year Goodwin composed the score for "Clash Of Loyalties". Was it 1981, 82 or 83? It wasn't in 1980, that's for sure.
But again, Ron Goodwin was 55 in 1980. That's very unusual in my view for someone like him to virutally put an end to his line of work. Why would he do such a thing? He wasn't a composer of the stature of a Erich Korngold who openly stopped working for Hollywood in order to return to his more ambitious classical compositions.
Furthermore, I don't think you could put a well known actor like Oliver Reed in the same basket as Ron Goodwin to prove anything. The most scandalously behaving top actor might still find work because he helps pulling in the needed money for any specific film. A composer with a stigma might not enjoy that luxury. But I really do not know if such a stigma was actually in place concerning Ron Goodwin's name and career after the composer accepted the commission. That's up to a serious researcher to find out.
Can somebody find a load that has the credits in English? Let's say hypothetically somebody wanted to get a screen grab of his composer credit.
You can see excerpts of the main title credits in English within the Channel 4 documentary that I've embedded in my initial post. See at 40:30 where it starts, then, Ron's credit appears at 40:50:
