"The Sand Pebbles" is the film that cemented Steve McQueen's status as a leading man in Hollywood, one in which his character is the embodiment of a loner, a rebel at odds with himself and his environment. His portrayal is so effective because it's grounded in his own upbringing. Abandoned by a self absorbed father at the age of four months, and with an alcoholic mother who had little time for him, McQueen was raised by a succession of relatives and eventually wound up in a reform school. His early bitterness with the world is reflected in his performance as Jake Holman, more at home with inanimate objects than with human beings. He finds comfort in the machine room of the San Pablo, a naval gunboat patrolling the Yangtze River in 1926 China.
There's a telling moment in the movie that's quite bittersweet; it's when Holman buys a caged bird from a street vendor for missionary Shirley Eckert (Candice Bergen). Holman explains that the bird is meant to be freed from it's cage. As Miss Eckert opens the door of the cage releasing the bird, it's gone in an instant, and the viewer is visually confronted with the notion of freedom and what it might mean to the population of 1920's China, a country of factions in a period of upheaval trying to find a way to unite.
Through it all, the mission of the San Pablo is to remain neutral under the supervision of Captain Collins (Richard Crenna), a no nonsense commander who takes his duty seriously, and experiences a moment of personal crisis after he faces down both his own men and Chinese nationalists who demand that he turn Holman over to them following an incident on the mainland. It's at this point in the film that motivations and actions of the crew become a bit muddled to my thinking, as the crew of the San Pablo in turn defy the Captain, and then completely submit to his authority without further consequence. This was a confusing aspect of the story for me.
Shot entirely in Taiwan, the making of the film was plagued with problems related to weather and equipment loss, extending the original eighty day filming schedule to seven months. The re-creation of the San Pablo into a 1920's era gunboat cost two hundred fifty thousand dollars, and what's fascinating to me was the way it was made to look as a worn out, dilapidated rust bucket. "The Sand Pebbles" went on to garner a fist full of Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor for McQueen, who lost out to Paul Scofield in "A Man For All Seasons". It's one of those pictures that when viewed today in relation to it's peers of the day, it becomes apparent that the major Academy Awards for that year went to the wrong movies.
There's a telling moment in the movie that's quite bittersweet; it's when Holman buys a caged bird from a street vendor for missionary Shirley Eckert (Candice Bergen). Holman explains that the bird is meant to be freed from it's cage. As Miss Eckert opens the door of the cage releasing the bird, it's gone in an instant, and the viewer is visually confronted with the notion of freedom and what it might mean to the population of 1920's China, a country of factions in a period of upheaval trying to find a way to unite.
Through it all, the mission of the San Pablo is to remain neutral under the supervision of Captain Collins (Richard Crenna), a no nonsense commander who takes his duty seriously, and experiences a moment of personal crisis after he faces down both his own men and Chinese nationalists who demand that he turn Holman over to them following an incident on the mainland. It's at this point in the film that motivations and actions of the crew become a bit muddled to my thinking, as the crew of the San Pablo in turn defy the Captain, and then completely submit to his authority without further consequence. This was a confusing aspect of the story for me.
Shot entirely in Taiwan, the making of the film was plagued with problems related to weather and equipment loss, extending the original eighty day filming schedule to seven months. The re-creation of the San Pablo into a 1920's era gunboat cost two hundred fifty thousand dollars, and what's fascinating to me was the way it was made to look as a worn out, dilapidated rust bucket. "The Sand Pebbles" went on to garner a fist full of Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor for McQueen, who lost out to Paul Scofield in "A Man For All Seasons". It's one of those pictures that when viewed today in relation to it's peers of the day, it becomes apparent that the major Academy Awards for that year went to the wrong movies.