The Sand Pebbles (1966)
The Sand Pebbles (1966), produced and directed by Robert Wise.
Jake Holman's shipmates think he is a Jonah. He does have a long run of bad luck, serving on a rusty dysfunctional gunboat during turbulent times. Is any of it his fault? He has his rough side but is pretty decent, one of the few such in his crew. He insists on running the engine room his own way, which causes friction.
The ship is his home. His last words: "I was home. What happened?"
I hadn't seen this for many years; it takes some energy to sit down for a 3 hour movie which is deliberately paced (some might say "slow") between the action segments. We expect an epic scale from the location shooting, specially built replica gunboat and living history of the awakening China, with fighting between the Communists and Nationalists and expulsion of the foreign militaries.
We have all that but the epic scale is reduced to a background for unhappy personal events, a list of competing dreads. The ship itself is an unhappy family commanded by a poor father figure. The sailors are crude and terribly abusive to the Chinese, especially the women. Especially one innocent young woman.
Not much hope here. Of our four lovers only one survives. Well-intentioned missionaries: it's bad for them, too. The mutinous river navy: escape is the best they can do, suffering many casualties. Peace, understanding and amity between peoples and nations: forget it.
Our cast and characters:
Steve McQueen uses a default vacant stare with his mouth slightly open. Then, when he focuses we know something is happening. The other cast members admired his work but said he was difficult to know. Trust issues kept him testing his friends for loyalty, which drove them away.
Richard Attenborough is a Brit playing a sensitive American called "Frenchy". The pain they put him through for his forbidden love for virgin prostitute Maily is heartbreaking. He was a prolific actor who became a fine director: A Bridge Too Far (1977), Magic (1978), Gandhi (1982). He was already planning Gandhi (1982) at this time.
Richard Crenna I always think of as "reliable". As captain he is a bit of an idiot. When told the engine needs service he says "It's never given us trouble before". Well, no Sir, it's not a problem until it's a problem. Then it is a problem. Do you never put oil in your car? In the end he is looking to die, and is accommodated.
Candice Bergen is 19 here, her first year in film. Her job is to be pure, innocent and well-intentioned, an unsuitable match for a China sailor.
Mako Iwamatsu is a human sacrifice, a pawn reenacting a death scene from Last of the Mohicans (1992). Years ago I watched the boxing match scene with a friend who said "Is this a joke?" Obviously the lean, muscular Po-han would massacre fleshy Stawski, who made the mistake of training on beer.
Marayat Andriane -- tragic, exploited Maily -- has only three IMDB acting credits, but as Emmanuelle Arsan was the creator of Emmanuelle, subject of long series of erotic books and movies of sexual discovery. The book was published clandestinely in France in 1959 and I don't know if she was known to be the author at this time. Later her husband was said to be the real author.
Simon Oakland is here the archetypal stupid bully and brute. We love to hate him and the actor is always very good.
Well known faces: Larry Gates, Joe Turkel, Gavin MacLeod, Richard Loo, James Hong (fan club!).
Jerry Goldsmith score; he was brought in when Alex North became ill (or -- some say -- objected to the amount of violence in the film). Goldsmith had been scoring movies and TV for ten years; this was his first epic scale film.
Photographed by Joseph MacDonald -- How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Niagara (1953), Yellow Sky (1948).
Available on Blu-ray, an early mpeg2 encoding. It is a good, unprocessed image.
Two commentary tracks: edited contributions by Robert Wise, Richard Crenna, Mako and Candice Bergen, and an isolated score with comments during the quiet parts from Nick Redman, Jon Burlingame and Lem Dobbs.
Robert Wise says:
The 1960s were the end of the era of road show pictures with limited initial release, overtures and intermissions, and he did several others during the decade: West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1965), Star! (1968).
Author Richard McKenna had been a China sailor in the 1930s and also wrote science fiction.
Paul Newman was offered the lead but thought it wrong for him. Wise suggested McQueen but the studio didn't think he was a big name. While the film was in development Wise went off to make The Sound of Music (1965) and by the time he returned McQueen had done The Great Escape (1963) and The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and was then the first choice.
Mako:
Studied Chinese to be more convincing in the role.
Was glad he didn't get the Oscar because he had no speech prepared.
Drove his VW camper van to the awards, the first new vehicle he had ever owned.
Says that when you have been nominated you get a lot of provisional job offers but these vanish if you don't win.
For a while after this film no one understood that he spoke English.
