# "The Sand Pebbles" Special Edition review



## Richard W. Haines (Jul 9, 2007)

I recently purchased "The Sand Pebbles" Special Edition DVD. For Steve McQueen fans, I highly recommend it but with some reservations. The standard theatrical cut has been beautifully restored. It's historically interesting in that this is the first 4K digital restoration. What that means is that they scanned the original camera negative at 14-bit linear and 10-bit log capability which is 4096 by 3112 pixels. Previous film restorations have been at the lower 2K rate. Kodak stated that to replicate the resolution of 35mm negative, the rate should be 4K. Of course the greater the number of pixels, the sharper and finer grain the image is. All of the previous restorations will have to be done again in the future.

What this translates to for the consumer is the Standard and High Definition DVDs will have a more realistic film like quality with superior sharpness and fine grain resolution. Fox also out-putted a new 35mm negative for the future formats. 
This is important since the original De Luxe color negative is fading like all non-Technicolor pre-print prior to 1983 (the advent of low fade stock). The new negative should last another 75 to 100 years. They also corrected all of the scratches, dirt and dust that accumulated on the origiinal after striking hundreds of prints back in 1966. Most consumers don't realize that prior to 1968, all color prints were struck directly off of the negative for exhibition. While this generated the best results for audiences, it also wore out the master. Today prints are struck from duplicate negatives which prevents damage to the camera negative. Unfortunately, these copies are inferior to the quality of the camera negative copies of the past. For home video release, the origiinal negative or first generation Interpositive is utilized which is why the DVDs look sharper and finer grain to the theatrical release prints. Of course they strike camera negative prints for Hollywood screenings.

In summary, the standard 1982 minute release cut of "The Sand Pebbles" looks as good as it did back in 1966. The same cannot be said for the 195 minute "Roadshow" version which is contained on the second disc. All that Fox had available was a faded De Luxe color 70mm print. It looks horrible with the pinkish fleshtones and skies drained of blue which was typical for deteriorated 
Eastmancolor prints back then. Only Technicolor prints didn't fade but Fox had switched to De Luxe (their own in house lab) for color movies in 1953 even though they used 'Glorious Technicolor" in the forties for movies like "The Gang's
All Here". There isn't much you can do with an old 70mm release print drained of most of it's color. At least fans of the movie can finally see the 15 minutes of scenes that were cut for general release. Unfortunately, even these proved to be disappointing. In the case of the extra footage between McQueen and Bergen, you can see the lack of chemistry between them which was one of the weak links in the story. McQueen looks distracted in the new sequences and doesn't seem too interested in her. The acting is a awkward which is probably why they cut them. The other missing scenes seem like padding that slow down the story. For example, there's an extra couple of minutes of McQueen crawling around the pipes that isn't necessary for the story. There's another bit where a ****** named "Sew Sew" measures him for a uniform which also isn't important. While the extra scenes are interesting from a historical standpoint, I'm not sure I would've restored any of them back into the movie if they could find the actual negative of them with the possible
exception of a restaurant sequence which makes a better transition to Frenchy's
wedding.


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