The Sand Pebbles (film)

Plot

In 1926, Machinists Mate First Class Jake Holman (Steve McQueen) transfers to the Yangtze River Patrol gunboat USS San Pablo. (The ship is nicknamed the "Sand Pebble" and its sailors "Sand Pebbles.") The officers condone coolies doing the work, leaving the sailors free for drills and idle bickering.

Because he enjoys taking care of engines, Holman bucks the system, overseeing the operation of the power plant himself - antagonizing not only the chief engine room coolie, Chien (Tommy Lee), but his shipmates as well. He does become close friends with one seasoned, sensitive seaman, Frenchy (Richard Attenborough).

Holman discovers a serious defect that the superstitious coolies have not fixed. Holman informs the captain, Lieutenant Collins (Richard Crenna), who declines to repair it. Only after the executive officer declares an emergency does Collins acquiesce. Chien insists on taking Holmans place and is accidentally killed. The chief coolie, Lop-eye Shing (Henry Wang), blames Holman. As a replacement for Chien, Holman selects Po-Han (Mako), and trains him. In time, the two become friends.

Po-Han is harassed by a sailor named Stawski (Simon Oakland), leading to a boxing match on which the crewmen place bets. Po-Hans victory leads to more friction between Holman and the rest of the crew.

An (off screen) incident involving British gunboats leads to Collins ordering the crew not to fire on, or return fire from, the Chinese, to avoid an diplomatic incident or providing fuel for xenophobic propaganda, especially by the Communists. Po-Han is sent ashore by the chief coolie and is captured. He is tortured by a mob of Chinese in full view of the crew. Collins attempts to buy Po-Hans release, but without success. Po-Han begs for someone to kill him. Holman disobeys orders and ends Po-Hans suffering with a rifle shot.

The San Pablo is stuck in port at Changsha for the winter due to low water levels. It must deal with increasingly hostile crowds surrounding it in numerous smaller boats. Lt. Collins also fears a possible mutiny.

Frenchy has saved an educated Chinese woman, Maily (Marayat Andriane), from prostitution by paying her debts. He marries her and regularly swims to shore to visit her, but he dies of pneumonia one night. Holman finds Maily sitting by Frenchys corpse. Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) militia burst in, beat Holman, and drag Maily away.

The next day, several Chinese demand Holman be turned over to them as the "murderer" of Maily. When the demand is rejected, the Chinese blockade the gunboat. The crew fear for their safety and demand that Holman surrender to the Chinese. Order is not restored until Collins fires a Lewis Gun across the bow of one of the Chinese sampans.

With spring at hand, Collins sails away, but receives orders to return to the coast. On his own he chooses to disobey orders and decides to evacuate idealistic, anti-imperialist missionary Jameson (Larry Gates) and his school teacher assistant, Shirley Eckert (Candice Bergen), from their remote mission up the Yangtze River. Holman had met Eckert in Changsha months earlier, and the two had romantic feelings for each other that did not have time to develop.

To reach the missionaries, the San Pablo must fight past a boom made up of junks carrying a massive rope blocking the river. A boarding party is sent to cut the rope. Fighting breaks out in which about a dozen sailors and many Chinese are killed. Holman cuts the rope while under fire. He kills a Chinese attacker, a friend of Jameson and Eckert. The ship then proceeds upriver.

Collins leads three sailors, including Holman, ashore. Jameson resists being rescued, claiming that he and Eckert have renounced their U.S. citizenship. Collins orders Holman to forcibly remove Eckert and Jameson, but Holman declares he is going to stay with them.

Nationalist soldiers attack the mission. They kill Jameson, despite his attempt to assure them he has no sympathy with the San Pablo rescue mission. Collins orders the patrol to return to the ship with Eckert, and remains behind to provide covering fire. Collins is killed, ironically leaving the normally rebellious Holman in command. Holman and Eckert have a tearful parting. Eckert only leaves after Holman assures her he will be along shortly. Holman kills several soldiers before he himself is fatally shot just when he is about to rejoin the others. His last bewildered words are: "I was home...what happened...what the hell happened?" Eckert and the remaining sailors reach the ship, and the San Pablo sails away.

Production

For years, Robert Wise had wanted to make The Sand Pebbles, but the film companies were reluctant to finance it. The Sand Pebbles was eventually paid for, but because its production required extensive location scouting and pre-production work, as well as being due to monsoons in Taipei, its producer and director Robert Wise realized that it would be over a year before principal photography could begin. At the insistence of the film company, Wise agreed to direct a "fill-in" project, The Sound of Music, a film that became one of the most popular and acclaimed films of the 1960s.

The film company spent $250,000 building a replica gunboat named the San Pablo, based on the USS Villalobos—a former Spanish Navy gunboat that was seized by the U.S. Navy in the Philippine Islands during the Spanish–American War (1898–99)—but with a greatly reduced draft to allow sailing on the shallow Tam Sui and Keelung rivers. A seaworthy vessel that was actually powered by Cummins diesel engines, the San Pablo made the voyage from Hong Kong to Taiwan and back under her own power during shooting of The Sand Pebbles. After filming was completed, the San Pablo was sold to the DeLong Timber Company and renamed the Nola D, then later sold to Seiscom Delta Exploration Co., who used her as a floating base camp with significant modifications including removal of her engines and the addition of a helipad.

The Sand Pebbles was filmed both in Taiwan and in Hong Kong. Its filming, which began on November 22, 1965, at Keelung, was scheduled to take about nine weeks, but it ended up taking seven months. The cast and crew took a break for the Christmas holidays at Tamsui, Taipei.

At one point a fifteen-foot camera boat capsized on the Keelung River, setting back the schedule because the soundboard was ruined when it sank. When the filming was finally finished in Taiwan, the government of the Republic of China held several members of the crew, including McQueen and his family, supposedly "hostage" by keeping their passports because of unpaid additional taxes. In March 1966, the filming finally moved to the Shaw Brothers studios in Hong Kong for three months, and then in June it traveled to Hollywood, California, to finish its interior scenes at the Fox Studios.

Due to frequent rain and other difficulties in Hong Kong, the filming was nearly abandoned. When he returned to Los Angeles, McQueen fell ill because he had an abscessed molar. He had not wanted to see a dentist until he returned to California. His dentist and physician ordered him to take an extended period of rest—one that halted production again for weeks.

Fittingly it rained the night of the premiere, December 20, 1966, at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City. Afterwards, McQueen did not do any film work for about a year due to exhaustion, saying that whatever sins that he had committed in his life had been paid for when he made The Sand Pebbles. The performance did earn McQueen the only Academy Award nomination of his career. He was not seen on film again until two movies of 1968, The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt (which included his fellow The Sand Pebbles actor Simon Oakland as Bullitts boss).

Themes and background

The military life of the San Pablos crew, the titular sand pebbles, portrays the eras racism and colonialism on a small scale, through the sailors relations with the coolies who run their gunboat and the bargirls who serve them off-duty, as well as on a large scale, with the Wests gunboat diplomacy domination of China.

Although the 1962 novel pre-dated extensive US activity in Vietnam and was not based on any historic incidents, by the December 1966 release of the film, it was seen as an explicit statement on the USs extensive combat involvement in the Vietnam War in reviews published by the New York Times. and Life magazine.

Critical reception

The film was met with critical acclaim. The film has a score of 88% with a certified "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 19 reviews and scored an 89% audience approval rating.

Academy Awards

Additional footage

After more than 40 years, 20th Century Fox found fourteen minutes of footage that had been cut from the films initial roadshow version shown at New Yorks Rivoli Theater. The restored version has been released on DVD. The sequences are spread throughout the film and add texture to the story, though they do not alter it in any significant way.