JAWS
dir: Steven Spielberg
"I'm tellin' ya, the crime rate in New York'll kill you. There's so many problems, you never feel like you're accomplishing anything. Violence, rip-offs, muggings... kids can't leave the house - you gotta walk them to school. But in Amity one man can make a difference. In twenty-five years, there's never been a shooting or a murder in this town." - Brody
Brief Synopsis
A great white shark terrorizes a small beach community on the Fourth of July. The businesses wish to ignore the issue in order for their town to remain profitable, but the Chief of Police, a shark expert, and a fisherman set out to stop the shark before it claims any more lives.
Why It's Here
When I was younger, I wondered which was better, Jurassic Park or Jaws? They are both very similar, there is a beast of great power that is threatening, nobody ever listens to the rational experts, the monster is always lurking in the darkness, and the kids are always caught in the midst of it. Of course, in the end I favoured Jurassic Park because every kid knows that while sharks are awesome, dinosaurs are ten times more awesome.
However, after re-evaluation and further insight past the dinosaurs vs. sharks argument, Jaws has surpassed my childhood silver medal and developed into a film I have come to respect and commemorate. Often billed as the first summer blockbuster, Jaws introduces numerous conventions of thrilling cinema while at the same time reminding us how far we've slid in the summer movie market.
Spielberg is a man who is great with casting, something he considers half of secret behind memorial performances, and in Jaws his trio of shark hunters are about his most memorable characters to date. The level-headed but out-of-his-element Police Chief Martin Brody(Roy Scheider) is (presumably) a former New York cop who complains about the lack of impact police make in cities like that. Spielberg's films are always ballads to suburbs and the simpleton lifestyle, rarely do we ever see a positively portrayed city-dweller in one of his films. Martin professes his love for his small town of Amity, how one man can make a difference and maintain a level of order within the community. Martin is also revealed to have a fear of water which of course complicates the issue of being a police chief on an island especially in a shark-attack situation. Martin defends himself stating, "it's only an island if you look at it from the water". Martin's two children are much less prominent than children in other Spielberg films, more often than not, older Spielberg films dealt heavily with children's perspectives and misadventures. In Jaws, Martin's older son is simply an point of reference for the innocent, water loving child of Amity who doesn't know any better but to hang out in a boat past dark.
Conflicting with Martin is the town's mayor who is the typical bureaucrat, more interested summer business and a re-election than the safety of the people. His stiff persona is an obvious and sharp contrast to the rest of the community; the guy even wears his suit to the beach. The children in the film, most often portrayed in large numbers, with only Martin's son acting as a face for them, show the oblivious innocence reflected against the greedy risk-taking of the mayor.
The most entertaining character is in the form of Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), a marine biologist whose nerdy appearance and college-level vocabulary alienate him from the simple folk of the docks. While Hooper always dishes out the predictably bad news to the hopeful but naive townsfolk and more specifically, mayor, he isn't so much a cynic as he is a reality check. He acts as a more engaging version of the logical Brody, flailing his arms hoping to be taken seriously. Other than him and Brody, the rest of the characters are made up of uneducated fisherman who do little more than glance at each other every time Hooper says "Carcharodon carcharias" and shrug. Hooper, for all his ridiculous behaviour, is what holds the characters in check.
The man who represents the "working class heroes" of the docks is Quint (Robert Shaw), whose cryptically draining monologues make him an enigmatic wonder, he is part man, part myth, but not even his experience and his leather skin are enough to bring in this shark. The unlikely trio that set out to sea all have combining features that make them each special and necessary, not just fresh meat for the films killer, something that separates Jaws from the usual horror venture.
The films lengthy third act is set entirely out at sea with no land in sight from any direction. Spielberg used this endless horizon with some sort of reverse-claustrophobic intention, there is nothing caging these characters in, yet there is no where to escape to--they are trapped within the sharks domain. This leads us to the film's famous villain who remains unseen for the majority of the film. Like film's before, but more prominently after (Alien springs to mind), the monster lurking just out of frame remains hidden for nearly the entire film with little glimpses offered here and there to keep the audience nibbling rather than giving up entirely. This tactic of suspense is a rarity today, as most movies spoil their big catch almost immediately, Jaws is paced so strategically that it's hard to imagine it as a summer blockbuster by reference to today's blockbusters. It's suspense is built on imagination alone, although John Williams legendary, Oscar winning score made it a whole lot easier to pull your mind where it needed to be.
While the film's climax offers it's own bag of treats, my personal love affair with the film is largely in the first half. Paranoia and nerve-wracking attention is what drives the first half of the film. The smallest movement along the surface of the water catches your eye, the great sound editing mixes the sounds of playful crowds with Williams score of dread. Amazingly edited, the sequence in which Martin tries to look past several people talking to him and watch the waters draws you in tighter than any elsewhere in the film. The very simple back-and-forth shots sewn together by bodies passing by in the foreground has a fluid motion to it, it simply looks great. These tense sequences are slightly relaxed by the gloomy sequences in Martin's home, including my favourite dinner scene where Martin's son mimics his actions of stress, ironically relieving them. A great moment of father-son interaction, which is on common ground with typical Spielberg work. This is the first true indication of what Steven Spielberg was capable of, had this script fallen in anyone else's hands (which it briefly did), the modern blockbuster may not have had such a great example of how to do it all right.
However, after re-evaluation and further insight past the dinosaurs vs. sharks argument, Jaws has surpassed my childhood silver medal and developed into a film I have come to respect and commemorate. Often billed as the first summer blockbuster, Jaws introduces numerous conventions of thrilling cinema while at the same time reminding us how far we've slid in the summer movie market.
Spielberg is a man who is great with casting, something he considers half of secret behind memorial performances, and in Jaws his trio of shark hunters are about his most memorable characters to date. The level-headed but out-of-his-element Police Chief Martin Brody(Roy Scheider) is (presumably) a former New York cop who complains about the lack of impact police make in cities like that. Spielberg's films are always ballads to suburbs and the simpleton lifestyle, rarely do we ever see a positively portrayed city-dweller in one of his films. Martin professes his love for his small town of Amity, how one man can make a difference and maintain a level of order within the community. Martin is also revealed to have a fear of water which of course complicates the issue of being a police chief on an island especially in a shark-attack situation. Martin defends himself stating, "it's only an island if you look at it from the water". Martin's two children are much less prominent than children in other Spielberg films, more often than not, older Spielberg films dealt heavily with children's perspectives and misadventures. In Jaws, Martin's older son is simply an point of reference for the innocent, water loving child of Amity who doesn't know any better but to hang out in a boat past dark.
Conflicting with Martin is the town's mayor who is the typical bureaucrat, more interested summer business and a re-election than the safety of the people. His stiff persona is an obvious and sharp contrast to the rest of the community; the guy even wears his suit to the beach. The children in the film, most often portrayed in large numbers, with only Martin's son acting as a face for them, show the oblivious innocence reflected against the greedy risk-taking of the mayor.
The most entertaining character is in the form of Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), a marine biologist whose nerdy appearance and college-level vocabulary alienate him from the simple folk of the docks. While Hooper always dishes out the predictably bad news to the hopeful but naive townsfolk and more specifically, mayor, he isn't so much a cynic as he is a reality check. He acts as a more engaging version of the logical Brody, flailing his arms hoping to be taken seriously. Other than him and Brody, the rest of the characters are made up of uneducated fisherman who do little more than glance at each other every time Hooper says "Carcharodon carcharias" and shrug. Hooper, for all his ridiculous behaviour, is what holds the characters in check.
The man who represents the "working class heroes" of the docks is Quint (Robert Shaw), whose cryptically draining monologues make him an enigmatic wonder, he is part man, part myth, but not even his experience and his leather skin are enough to bring in this shark. The unlikely trio that set out to sea all have combining features that make them each special and necessary, not just fresh meat for the films killer, something that separates Jaws from the usual horror venture.
The films lengthy third act is set entirely out at sea with no land in sight from any direction. Spielberg used this endless horizon with some sort of reverse-claustrophobic intention, there is nothing caging these characters in, yet there is no where to escape to--they are trapped within the sharks domain. This leads us to the film's famous villain who remains unseen for the majority of the film. Like film's before, but more prominently after (Alien springs to mind), the monster lurking just out of frame remains hidden for nearly the entire film with little glimpses offered here and there to keep the audience nibbling rather than giving up entirely. This tactic of suspense is a rarity today, as most movies spoil their big catch almost immediately, Jaws is paced so strategically that it's hard to imagine it as a summer blockbuster by reference to today's blockbusters. It's suspense is built on imagination alone, although John Williams legendary, Oscar winning score made it a whole lot easier to pull your mind where it needed to be.
While the film's climax offers it's own bag of treats, my personal love affair with the film is largely in the first half. Paranoia and nerve-wracking attention is what drives the first half of the film. The smallest movement along the surface of the water catches your eye, the great sound editing mixes the sounds of playful crowds with Williams score of dread. Amazingly edited, the sequence in which Martin tries to look past several people talking to him and watch the waters draws you in tighter than any elsewhere in the film. The very simple back-and-forth shots sewn together by bodies passing by in the foreground has a fluid motion to it, it simply looks great. These tense sequences are slightly relaxed by the gloomy sequences in Martin's home, including my favourite dinner scene where Martin's son mimics his actions of stress, ironically relieving them. A great moment of father-son interaction, which is on common ground with typical Spielberg work. This is the first true indication of what Steven Spielberg was capable of, had this script fallen in anyone else's hands (which it briefly did), the modern blockbuster may not have had such a great example of how to do it all right.