The Chairman (1969)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

J. Lee Thompson

Writers:

Jay Richard Kennedy (novel)
Ben Maddow (screenplay)

Release Date:

July 1969 (UK)

Genre:

Action | Drama

Tagline:

"This is it. They're finally together. Right now we can detonate our explosive and destroy the Chairman."

Plot:

An American scientist (Gregory Peck) is sent to Red China to steal the formula for a newly developed agricultural enzyme...

Plot Keywords:

Computer | Spy | Cold War | Communism | Based On Novel

Cast

Gregory Peck	...	John Hathaway
Anne Heywood	...	Kay Hanna
Arthur Hill	...	Shelby
Alan Dobie	...	Benson
Conrad Yama	...	The Chairman
Zienia Merton	...	Ting Ling
Ori Levy	...	Shertov
Eric Young	...	Yin
Burt Kwouk	...	Chang Shou
Alan White	...	Gardner
Keye Luke	...	Professor Soong Li
Francesca Tu	...	Soong Chu (as Francisca Tu)
Mai Ling	...	Stewardess
Gordon Sterne	...	U.S. Airforce Sergeant
Robert Lee	...	Hotel Night Manager

Also Known As:

The Most Dangerous Man in the World (UK)

Runtime:

USA:98 min (FMC Library Print) | Spain:93 min

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

UK:A | Finland:(Banned) (1969) (theatrical) | Finland:K-12 (1989) (video) | USA:M (original rating) | USA:PG (re-rating) | Singapore:NC-16 | Norway:16 (original rating) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

Company:

APJAC Productions

Trivia:

Average Shot Length = ~4.3 seconds. Median Shot Length = ~3.9 seconds.

Not exactly a bomb but certainly no classic

The Chairman (aka The Most Dangerous Man in the World) starts off with an amazing photo montage title sequence by Paul Brown Constable dealing with overpopulation and the rise of the Red Guard in Mao's China accompanied by the increasingly strident tones of Jerry Goldsmith's superb score that sets the scene for a much better film than you get. Any hope of a serious political thriller is quickly lost as soon as Arthur Hill's cycloptic general turns up and it turns out the bug implanted in Gregory Peck's skull is also a bomb. What you get instead is a fairly glossy, fashionably cynical shot-on-location thriller that briefly touches on humanistic issues in a couple of scenes before getting back to the spy stuff that's neither James Bond nor John Le Carre but pure Hollywood hokum in the 60s mould. Ironically, although the producers harboured the notion of filming in China in a monumental fit of delusion, it was the Hong Kong and Taiwanese authorities that really objected to the subject matter (as either too defamatory or deferential to Mao as the prevailing mood would have it). J. Lee Thompson's direction is occasionally visually ambitious, but seems to have suffered in the editing, with several very obvious edits to alternate takes interrupting what were clearly intended as continuous camera moves. It's a shame that Fox's Region 1 DVD is the US version, relegating the racier scenes to the extra features - who'd have thought there'd ever be a movie with Gregory Peck having his trousers undone by a naked woman on her knees?