The Sand Pebbles

Arsan Pebbles

The Sand Pebbles
USA 1966 
Directed by Robert Wise 
20th Century Fox Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight, implied spoilers.

CHINA 1926 . . . RAVAGED FROM WITHIN BY CORRUPT WARLORDS... OPPRESSED FROM WITHOUT BY THE GREAT WORLD POWERS WHO HAD BEATEN CHINA TO HER KNEES A CENTURY BEFORE... CHINA...A COUNTRY OF FACTIONS TRYING TO UNITE TO BECOME A NATION . . . THROUGH REVOLUTION.
from The Sand Pebbles

Based on a book by Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles is a story about the Chinese revolution of 1926 and the xenophobic relations, on both sides, between China and the USA. Steve McQueen plays Jake Holman, a navy engineer who is transferred to the USS San Pablo to join up with them and run their engines, in order to continue to take the boat running up and down the river, in order to demonstrate an American presence on Chinese waters. However, the catch is that, unless an American life is endangered, they are not allowed to shoot against the Chinese, just stay neutral so they don’t incite a war. 

The film mostly takes place on board the ship but also goes off shore to a bar and whorehouse where the navy men go at night. Shenanigans ensue with a sub-plot for a virgin sex worker who is asking a very unaffordable $200 in order to get her some place else and, also, Holman’s day-to-day trying to work around an engineering section controlled by local Chinese people... and also inadvertently starting a romance with the film’s lead actress, not to mention trying to raise money for his friend Frenchy to free and ultimately marry the sex worker. Everything piles up and, consequence after consequence of various bad decisions bring th film to a fairly bleak climax, it has to be said. 

Now, I’ve never seen this film before but I’ve ben very well aware of it, primarily due to the fantastic score by Jerry Goldsmith (which I own in a couple of versions and have also heard him do excerpts in concerts over the years... I sure miss going to see Goldsmith when he hit town in London). Luckily for me, the Blu Ray includes his opening Overture and also keeps in his Intermission music. So good for them. 

The cast is phenomenal. In addition to McQueen you have Candice Bergen playing his missionary love interest, Richard Attenborough as Frenchy (who would later cast Bergen in one of the films he directed, namely Gandhi), Richard Crenna who is the captain of the ship, the great Simon Oakland, Mako (playing the engineer McQueen trains up to help run the engine room), Joe Turkell and James Hong. Turkell and Hong, of course, would later appear as Dr. Eldon Tyrell and Chew the Eye Maker in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (reviewed by me here). 

And, the sex worker known as Maily is played by Marayat Andriane... which is, of course, the name used by Emmanuelle Arsan for this (or probably vice versa actually, since her actual name was Marryat Rollett-Andriane), the first of her three acting roles - one in a TV episode, this one and, based on her novel, Laure (reviews of both the book and the movie adaptation will be coming to this blog as part of this series of reviews). So she’s the reason why I’ve finally given some retina time to The Sand Pebbles and, of her performance, I’d have to say it’s a pretty strong supporting role and she has a lot of presence. 

There have been rumours, never actually confirmed as far as I can find out (although I wish they’d translate that new biography that came out last year in France into English at some point) that she had an affair with McQueen. If that’s ever confirmed, judging from what I’ve found out about her from my readings and a smidgeon of research, reading between the lines, I would guess that McQueen would have been seeing both her and her husband and probably the various members from the swinging scene in Thailand that allegedly sprang up around her and her husband. But, as I said, the reports are completely unconfirmed and just rumours (as far as I know). That being said, McQueen gave up acting for a year due to the turmoil and the physical and emotional stress of a difficult shoot. Whether Arsan had anything to do with that stress is anybody’s guess. 

Either way, I’m glad I finally caught up to this film because it’s excellent, which is what I should have expected from a director with the calibre of Robert Wise, who uses certain elements of the original source as a metaphor for what was going on in Vietnam at the time. Even I could see the parallels. 

The film is intriguing with the dialogue, well performed by a cast of very good actors, has you on the edge of your seat for quite a lot of its running time and has some beautiful photography and compositions. It’s like Robert Wise can’t help himself on that last point. Even a shot of the crewmen repelling borders by unleashing hoses full of water on Chinese people trying to board the vessel conjures up a fair few rainbows in the water they are pumping. It’s great stuff.

And then there’s Jerry Goldsmith’s wonderful score. Goldsmith was always good at spotting a movie, which is the process of deciding where to position the musical cues in a movie and when to leave it silent. The Sand Pebbles is pared back quite a bit in the scoring, with long sequences playing without any music, which of course allows the music to do some heavy lifting when it suddenly rushes back in to fill that void. And it works like a charm here. On the strength of this score, Jerry was given the assignment of Planet Of The Apes (reviewed here) and didn’t look back. 

It’s a long film and certainly a satisfying one, considerably of the variety of ‘they don’t make movies like that anymore’. Indeed, I can’t imagine a project like this one would ever get greenlit in today’s, much less interesting climate of Hollywood movies, for sure. And the transfer from a gorgeous print found on the Blu Ray is something I wasn’t expecting from a major Hollywood studio, from whom I expect much less of a good job than from a proper, independent boutique label. But that’s me done with The Sand Pebbles and I’m glad I’ve finally ticked it off the long standing list, even if the ending is one you’ll see coming a long way off.