Richard Attenborough – Remembering Sand Pebbles

Just a week or so ago no the sad news of Lauren Bacall’s death I noted that her one China feature – Blood Alley – was not as good unfortunately as the Steve McQueen movie The Sand Pebbles, which has a slightly similar plot. Well, now, sadly, Richard Attenborough has died, one of the stars of The Sand Pebbles. The movie, released in 1966, was adapted from the Richard MacKeena novel and is a great film (in my opinion). Engineer Jake Holman (McQueen) arrives aboard the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the “rice-bowl” system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat’s presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission. And Candice Bergen happens to need rescuing too!! There’s some spectacular location shooting in Taiwan too.

Arguably the best supporting role in the film is Attenborough’s as Frenchy Burgoyne who spends plenty of time in a Chinese whore house, marries a whore and eventually comes to a rather rum ending. The bar room scenes, including a good brawl, are all signature Attenborough moments in the movie for which he got a Golden Globe but missed an Oscar….Worth a watch on DVD if you can find a copy….