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Posted: |
Apr 25, 2016 - 6:34 PM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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Anyway, this movie is not an analogy of US involvement in Vietnam. The book was written before the US got itself stuck in that mess.
It can be seen as such, regardless of when the book was written, since the parallels remain nevertheless obvious.
Other than it's Asian setting, I don't see it. IN TSP the official policy is to remain neutral, not to engage any force or provoke anyone, not to shoot except in self defense. The captain launches his action against orders in a misguided sense of purpose with honor. This is not what the US did in Vietnam, not matter how misguided in retrospect, the US was not neutral, it provoked and it was amoral. Unfortunately, those that planned US actions in Vietnam probably never read or saw THE SAND PEBBLES.
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I don't remember if I've ever had occasion to share this before on the Board. I dearly hope I shared it with Robert Wise when I was interviewing him in 1979. THE SAND PEBBLES is indeed, as Henry cautions above, a serious drama with tragic overtones. And violence. When the movie first came out, a friend of mine was an usherette at the Pittsburgh theater where it was playing. According to her, she overheard a couple of matrons exiting after it was over, when one said to the other, "Well, it was certainly no SOUND OF MUSIC!"
***
Re-reading the previous thread to which Howard links us, I see that my friend Rozsaphile was wondering if the love theme in the film ever truly rose to any expressive heights. John, I don't know about in the film, but trust me, long before I ever saw it, the theme rose to expressive heights in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whenever my sweetheart, Nancy, put the LP on just before bedtime.
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Posted: |
Apr 25, 2016 - 10:08 PM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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Oh yes, Preston, the tenderness within the arrangement is exquisite. The scenes directly after intermission, esp. the one at the cafe with Holman and the teacher, highlight its beauty in all kinds of orchestration. One of JG's romantic bests IMHO.
I'll add one more comparison into the mix, that of individualism vs. nationalism. As to the Vietnam thing, an application of various themes, main or othwerwise, seems appropriate to me. Domino theory and all. But I will agree that there is not a direct application in that the San Pablo got caught up in the crossfire between emerging nationalist factions. Heck, China was a friend in the next great war before civil war hell broke loose i.e. Mao. The US was much more an actor in the early stages of the Hanoi/Saigon conflict before its great escalation. Then again, I've forgotten a lot of the details and welcome clarification.
Going back to the Bell Tolls similarities, both the Gary Cooper and McQueen characters face the same fate in the same circumstances at film's climax. Striking similarity, really. As is the thought of Victor Young on one end and Jerry G on the other.
I will have to take money/mouth action next and reread the other thread, too. Have tried not to overlap observations and want to see if they all hold up.
PS [several minutes later]
they do and that thread is remarkable but krep, feels like I've lost beaucoup brain cells in the intervening years
PPS [even more minutes later]
from Bosley Crowther's review, NY Times, Dec. 21, 1966:
IT is likely that audiences seeing the film Robert Wise has made from Richard McKenna's popular novel, "The Sand Pebbles," will not see it simply as a tale of the involvement of a United States Navy gunboat on the Yangtze River in China in 1926.
Although it gives a fascinating picture, characteristically exotic and confused, of the challenges to our tiny forces when they found themselves suddenly exposed to the explosion of the Nationalist revolution engineered by Chiang Kai-shek, it is not as historical romance that it is likely to grab the audience, but as a weird sort of hint of what has happened and is happening in Vietnam....
...Thus, because it is so graphic and metaphorically so aligned with our current dilemma in the Far East, "The Sand Pebbles" as a film has a great deal more pertinence and likely impact than it has as a book. And this realization compels us to scan it the more inquisitively.
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E05E5D9123BE63ABC4951DFB467838D679EDE
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Posted: |
Apr 26, 2016 - 2:03 AM
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Thor
(Member)
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At the rate you're going, Thor, I think you'll run out of time. Too bad.
Sadly, yes. As someone who's studied film, taught film and now write about film for a living, I'm required to cover so many types of films (not to mention see most new films of a given year) that the opportunities to cover those 'essentials' you've missed in the past get less and less frequent. 
It's an interesting subject, though, and we've done some threads on it over the years. Here is a list of all the films I watched last year:
https://mubi.com/lists/all-feature-films-seen-in-2015
Included among the 'classic-film-holes' I watched for the first time last year are IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, LOVE ACTUALLY, THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW, AMARCORD, MEAN STREETS, LIFEBOAT, PERSONA, THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE (Ray, 1958), THE 400 BLOWS etc.
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Anyway, this movie is not an analogy of US involvement in Vietnam. The book was written before the US got itself stuck in that mess.
It can be seen as such, regardless of when the book was written, since the parallels remain nevertheless obvious.
Other than it's Asian setting, I don't see it. IN TSP the official policy is to remain neutral, not to engage any force or provoke anyone, not to shoot except in self defense. The captain launches his action against orders in a misguided sense of purpose with honor. This is not what the US did in Vietnam, not matter how misguided in retrospect, the US was not neutral, it provoked and it was amoral. Unfortunately, those that planned US actions in Vietnam probably never read or saw THE SAND PEBBLES.
Well, I don't think the movie must be seen in the Vietnam context, but it certainly can. Troops in a foreign country on life risking missions they don't completely understand that are decided elsewhere, personal choices that make sense or are moral vs. following the rules and orders, uneasy presence of military to provide a stability that is on the verge of escalating into something else at any time. Lots of viewers and critics noticed and pointed out many parallels between the Vietnam War and certain elements of THE SAND PEBBLES.
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Posted: |
Apr 26, 2016 - 6:18 AM
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jackfu
(Member)
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As I recall back in 1968, my eighth-grade English Lit teacher spent quite a bit of time with us on the film. He was big into film study and such and even more so Broadway shows. He spent a couple of days playing the LP score to “My Fair Lady” for us. He had little cardboard cutouts of characters and would have them dance across an overhead projector so that we saw nearly life-sized silhouettes dancing on the classroom wall. He sang every song along with the album and voiced over the narration as well.
Anyway, though most of us had not seen “The Sand Pebbles” film, he took us through his analysis. To him, it was about the colonialism and interventionalism and even jingoism of America and how such an approach in the guise of national interest often placed our own (especially military) people with no personal stake in the events into the middle of circumstances beyond their own control. Also by employing, involving the people of those countries of interest, even while often benefitting them financially actually could set them at odds against their fellows and endanger them. All this analysis of course was connected to the general growing war weariness of the conflict in Vietnam and the concerns that little of America’s national interest was truly at stake then, etc., etc.
I just remember that most of the boys in the class who had seen it thought it was boring except for the part where, no offense intended, “the coolie gets crushed”. They exaggerated it, because I remember thinking "How can they show something that graphic?" at the time. Later when I did first see the film in my late teens I enjoyed it but was really more into the score. Still the film and score are both favorites of mine.
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As I recall back in 1968, my eighth-grade English Lit teacher spent quite a bit of time with us on the film. He was big into film study and such and even more so Broadway shows. He spent a couple of days playing the LP score to “My Fair Lady” for us. He had little cardboard cutouts of characters and would have them dance across an overhead projector so that we saw nearly life-sized silhouettes dancing on the classroom wall. He sang every song along with the album and voiced over the narration as well.
This sounds great. 
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To answer your original question, Zooba:
Yes, "The Sand Pebbles" is one of the essential Jerry Goldsmith scores.
I'll add that "The Blue Max", "Planet of the Apes", "A Patch of Blue" and "The Boys from Brazil" are also essentials in addition to the ones you likely already have.
I would put all these scores high, very high up in the Goldsmith canon... but of these, THE SAND PEBBLES and PLANET OF THE APES are the best movies that stood the test of time. (The other movies are good and interesting as well, but not as classic and/or iconic as the TSB and PoTA.)
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Posted: |
Apr 26, 2016 - 11:34 AM
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RoryR
(Member)
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To answer your original question, Zooba:
Yes, "The Sand Pebbles" is one of the essential Jerry Goldsmith scores.
I'll add that "The Blue Max", "Planet of the Apes", "A Patch of Blue" and "The Boys from Brazil" are also essentials in addition to the ones you likely already have.
I would put all these scores high, very high up in the Goldsmith canon... but of these, THE SAND PEBBLES and PLANET OF THE APES are the best movies that stood the test of time. (The other movies are good and interesting as well, but not as classic and/or iconic as the TSB and PoTA.)
We may not agree about the meaning of TSP, Zwar, but I fully agree with that last statement. I hate to agree about THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, but it's just not one of Schaffner's best.
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The film, PATTON (or, PATTON : Lust For Glory as it was titled for UK release) is a masterpiece, both in terms of film-making and film scoring...
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We may not agree about the meaning of TSP, Zwar, but I fully agree with that last statement. I hate to agree about THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, but it's just not one of Schaffner's best.
Hey, I am not reading all that much Vietnam allegory into TSP, I'm just understanding that it can be done.
Anyway, I guess we both agree that THE SAND PEBBLES is a great movie.
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Posted: |
Apr 26, 2016 - 11:47 AM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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The film, PATTON (or, PATTON : Lust For Glory as it was titled for UK release) is a masterpiece, both in terms of film-making and film scoring...
As much as I love PATTON, I like PLANET OF THE APES and THE SAND PEBBLES more -- and their scores! But, yeah, we can't forget PATTON.
In fact, let's not forget the Schaffner/Goldsmith triple P classics, PLANET OF THE APES, PATTON and PAPILLON.
Boy, it would have been nice if Goldsmith could have also scored Schaffner's THE WAR LORD.
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But yeah -- I'll get to it.
