Monthly Archives: February 2019

The Sand Pebbles
Directed by Robert Wise
Written by Robert Anderson from a novel by Richard McKenna
1966/USA
Argyle Productions/Solar Productions/Robert Wise Productions/Twentieth Century Fox
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Jake Holman: Hello, Engine; I’m Jake Holman.[/box]

Despite all its accolades, this grouchy viewer found The Sand Pebbles to be a 3-hour snooze-fest punctuated by episodes of cruelty and racial violence.  Not my cup of tea at all.

The year is 1926 and the setting is a tributary of the Yangtse River in China.  Revolution is in the air.  The Great Powers are still attempting gunboat diplomacy.  Jake Holman (Steve McQueen) is an engineer in the U.S. Navy whose whole life is engines.  He is looking forward to serving on an older gunboat where he can be his own boss.  He finds out too late that crazy Captain Collins (Richard Crenna) has hired Chinese coolies to perform all the manual labor on board.  All the Americans on board are supposed to be available for the ship’s military mission should it ever have one.  The coolie in charge of the engine room tries to sabotage Jake.

Eventually, that coolie is killed and Jake is forced to train another Chinese to take his place.   Po-han (Mako) and Jake eventually become friends. Po-han pays dearly for this.  Jake has a tentative romance with a schoolteacher (Candice Bergen) who works in a missionary compound up river. In the meantime, shipmate Frenchy (Richard Attenborough) falls in love with a Chinese virgin who his being held for sale to the highest bidders.  The local population becomes more and more hostile to the American presence.   I’ll stop there.

Within the first 15-minutes of this film it was clear that Wise was as interested in making a travelogue as in making an action movie.  So we get a lot of beautiful scenery that does not advance the action.  On top of that, Steve McQueen is forced to act a lot with his face.  This is not his forte.  We spend many minutes watching him explore the engine while contemplating something or other.  The action picks up whenever the Chinese enter the picture.  Unfotunately, they are usually being subjected to cruel treatment.  I’m not big on watching that kind of thing either.  So it wasn’t for me.  Jerry Goldsmith’s score is a thing of beauty, however.

The Sand Pebbles was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of: Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Supporting Actor (Mako); Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; Best Sound; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Original Score.

Walk, Don’t Run
Directed by Charles Walters
Written by Sol Saks based on a story by Robert Russell and Frank Ross
1966/US
Sol C. Siegel Productions
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Christine Easton: After 7:45, you can have the bathroom all day if you’d like.

Sir William Rutland: I wouldn’t know what to do in the bathroom all day![/box]

Cary Grant’s final film is a remake of 1943’s The More the Merrier with Grant in the Charles Coburn part.  The earlier film is classic, this one is fairly fun.

Christine Easton (Samantha Eggar) works at the British Embassy in Tokyo.  She considered it her patriotic duty to offer up her apartment to share during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.  She had intended to attract a female roommate but industrialist Sir William Rutland (Grant), who has arrived two days before his hotel reservation, muscles himself in.   Shortly thereafter, Rutland meets and takes a liking to young American architect and Olympic compeititor  Steve Davis (Jim Hutton) and agrees to share wis room with him.  When he finds out Christine is engaged to an awful diplomat, he starts matchmaking.

There was a time in the mid-60’s when the Code was gone and mainstream filmmakers took the opportunity to get slightly racy with their content.  Oftentimes as here, the result is double entendres that just feel icky somehow.  An example is the long conversation between Grant and Hutton about whether Eggar “has … ” or not.  The movie is also filled with unfunny jabs at the Soviets.  But. still, there’s Grant as suave as ever and he has some funny physical business to do.  As a bonus, we get to hear him hum the theme songs from Charade and An Affair to Remember!

Unused theme song – love this! – feels like summer

The Hawks and the Sparrows (Uccellacci e uccellini)
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Written by Pier Paolo Palolini and Dante Ferretti
1966/Italy
Arco Film
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] [on atheism] If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief. (1966) – Pier Paolo Pasolini[/box]

Pasolini shows his whimsical side in this biting satire of class struggle and religious conflict.

Innocenti Toto (Toto) and Innocenti Ninetto (Ninetto Davoli) are two bums wandering around the backroads of Italy as their hunger pangs increase.  They meet up with a Marxist crow who passes the time by telling them a fable.

In medieval times, two monks (also portrayed by Toto and Davoli) are sent by God on missions to convert the hawks and the sparrows.  Will success make friends of the two enemies?

Toto is a classic clown and this is an amusing film.  Love the ending!  Ennio Morricone’s fun score sounds a lot like surfing music and works amazingly well.