"It's the most difficult picture I ever made." - Robert Wise
An underrated film by director Robert Wise, "The Sand Pebbles" stars Steve McQueen as Jake Holman, a maverick engineer on-board the "San Pablo", a US gunboat tasked with patrolling the Yangtze River.
Like many films from the 1960s, "The Sand Pebbles" is resolutely "anti establishment", with its (unintentional?) critiques of the Vietnam war, its anger at misguided foreign policies, its scepticism toward duty and patriotism, and its portrayal of American diplomacy as being explicitly racist, arrogant and indifferent to the affairs of indigenous peoples.
But the film is also atypical of anti war epics of this period. Watch, for example, how director Robert Wise methodically dwells on the finer details of life aboard a ship. Watch how he sketches the personal and international conflicts of the period. Watch how he focuses on the pressures placed on the ship's captain, who must walk a fine line to prevent escalating tensions and whose boat slowly becomes a floating garrison, and watch how beautifully spatial the film is, despite Wise's simple shot selection. Couple this to Wise's gorgeous location photography – he made "The Sound of Music" a few years earlier, and serves up similarly grand scenery here – and you have a pretty interesting epic.
Most interesting, though, is actor Steve McQueen. McQueen was all about acting with the eyes and taking with his body, but here he went so far as to kick playwright Robert Anderson off script duty and to request the removal of much of his character's dialogue. The result is a low-key, and at times very riveting performance.
In terms of flaws, the film is too long, its portrayal of Asians is at times caricatural, it possesses a stiffness which was just about going out of style in the mid 1960s, several subplots are handled poorly and a romance between an American naval officer and a prostitute (which Wise himself regrets leaving in the film) feels unnecessary. And like most films with supposedly "rebellious" heroes, McQueen's character actually does nothing to undermine the efficiency of the military he so deplores. In fact, all the "trouble" he causes merely contributes to the smooth and efficient running of his ship. Far from a bad boy or bad apple, McQueen is the perfect conformist, a trait common in supposedly "anti militarist" films.
The film's "behind the scenes" troubles are the stuff of legend, Wise's crew braving stormy weather, a completely foreign culture, a war (with Taiwan) and the difficult handling of a full scale mock up of a war ship. Ten years later, when Francis Ford Coppola was experiencing similar problems on "Apocalypse Now", he requested a copy of "The Sand Pebbles" from Wise. Coppola wanted to show his crew what the end result could be in spite of any problems.
8/10 – An underrated film, in many respects better than "The Bridge On The River Kwai", "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Apocalypse Now", three films it resembles. The product of an era in which epics tended to be experimental and intelligent, "The Sand Pebbles" is only occasionally undermined by hokey moments. It was a passion project for Wise, who directed "The Sound of Music" in order to get "Pebbles" financed.
An underrated film by director Robert Wise, "The Sand Pebbles" stars Steve McQueen as Jake Holman, a maverick engineer on-board the "San Pablo", a US gunboat tasked with patrolling the Yangtze River.
Like many films from the 1960s, "The Sand Pebbles" is resolutely "anti establishment", with its (unintentional?) critiques of the Vietnam war, its anger at misguided foreign policies, its scepticism toward duty and patriotism, and its portrayal of American diplomacy as being explicitly racist, arrogant and indifferent to the affairs of indigenous peoples.
But the film is also atypical of anti war epics of this period. Watch, for example, how director Robert Wise methodically dwells on the finer details of life aboard a ship. Watch how he sketches the personal and international conflicts of the period. Watch how he focuses on the pressures placed on the ship's captain, who must walk a fine line to prevent escalating tensions and whose boat slowly becomes a floating garrison, and watch how beautifully spatial the film is, despite Wise's simple shot selection. Couple this to Wise's gorgeous location photography – he made "The Sound of Music" a few years earlier, and serves up similarly grand scenery here – and you have a pretty interesting epic.
Most interesting, though, is actor Steve McQueen. McQueen was all about acting with the eyes and taking with his body, but here he went so far as to kick playwright Robert Anderson off script duty and to request the removal of much of his character's dialogue. The result is a low-key, and at times very riveting performance.
In terms of flaws, the film is too long, its portrayal of Asians is at times caricatural, it possesses a stiffness which was just about going out of style in the mid 1960s, several subplots are handled poorly and a romance between an American naval officer and a prostitute (which Wise himself regrets leaving in the film) feels unnecessary. And like most films with supposedly "rebellious" heroes, McQueen's character actually does nothing to undermine the efficiency of the military he so deplores. In fact, all the "trouble" he causes merely contributes to the smooth and efficient running of his ship. Far from a bad boy or bad apple, McQueen is the perfect conformist, a trait common in supposedly "anti militarist" films.
The film's "behind the scenes" troubles are the stuff of legend, Wise's crew braving stormy weather, a completely foreign culture, a war (with Taiwan) and the difficult handling of a full scale mock up of a war ship. Ten years later, when Francis Ford Coppola was experiencing similar problems on "Apocalypse Now", he requested a copy of "The Sand Pebbles" from Wise. Coppola wanted to show his crew what the end result could be in spite of any problems.
8/10 – An underrated film, in many respects better than "The Bridge On The River Kwai", "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Apocalypse Now", three films it resembles. The product of an era in which epics tended to be experimental and intelligent, "The Sand Pebbles" is only occasionally undermined by hokey moments. It was a passion project for Wise, who directed "The Sound of Music" in order to get "Pebbles" financed.