Having recently directed such classics as West Side Story, The Haunting and The Sound of Music, legendary director Robert Wise set his sights in 1965 on making a war movie. Adapted from the Robert McKenna novel, this production took Wise, his cast and crew to Hong Kong and Taiwan. And while the end result was a critical and box office success, The Sand Pebbles is not as fondly remembered as several other classic war movies. Nominated for eight Oscars but the winner of none, The Sand Pebbles is a powerful and occasionally touching – if often slow and ponderous – war epic.
Stationed on the Yangtze River in 1926, The Sand Pebbles are the self-named crew of the U.S. gunboat San Pablo. Commanded by the devoted yet inexperienced Captain Collins, the San Pablo’s main mission in China is to represent an American presence. This entails constant drills and exercises, while all the hard labour is done by the Asian “coolies” that also inhabit the naval vessel. The status quo of the San Pablo is disrupted upon the arrival of new Engineer Captain Jake Holman. Preferring to run the engine himself, as opposed to having the Chinese servants do it, Holman immediately ruffles a few feathers among the other officers.
Several of Jake’s crew mates have stories of their own: Frenchy falls in love with a beautiful Chinese “hostess”, but must first come up with the two hundred bucks to buy her freedom. Po-Han, a curious young Asian engineer becomes Jake’s new apprentice, much to the dismay of the other “coolies”. Other plot threads include the confusing politics of China in the ‘20s, Jake’s romance with a young American missionary and the crew’s intensifying dislike of the newcomer and his methods.
The late, great Steve McQueen (The Hunter, Papillon) gives a standout performance as Jake, while Richard Crenna (of First Blood, in a performance that, at times, borders on camp) is enjoyably intense as Collins. Richard Attenborough (Jurassic Park, The Great Escape) offers a sweet performance as a soldier in love, and a 19-year-old Candice Bergen (Gandhi, Miss Congeniality) shows up as the painfully naïve missionary.
Produced before most of the “anti-war” war films, The Sand Pebbles is a clever war film in that it draws subtle parallels to then-current affairs (the growing Vietnam conflict) by offering a story from wars past. Full of gorgeous imagery and sequences of massive scope, this is a fine film and yet another feather in Robert Wise’s cap. The Jerry Goldsmith score is also a plus. My only complaint is that this movie slows to a crawl more than once. Clocking in at just over three hours, it’s sometimes a test of endurance – but it’s a fascinating one, and a movie that may teach as much as it entertains.
