Jaws (1975) Review

WARNING! SPOILER ALERT!

This film begins very simply with an underwater camera cutting through an ocean. In between these shots of the deep we cut to a beach campfire surrounded by young teens. Two (eventually one of them falls down, too drunk to continue) of them run off for a late night swim. Naked, because that's what teenagers apparently do. While a young woman swims we cut back under the surface. In a shot that obviously references a similar moment from The Creature from the Black Lagoon we see her silhouetted body. She treads water for a few moments enjoying the ocean. This is when a pleasurable moment in the film abruptly becomes jarring. She is pulled under the surface over and over before being dragged from side to side, screaming in pain. We don't see what attacks her. Then she is pulled under one last time. The next day Amity Island Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is called out to investigate this woman's body (um half body). Much to his dismay, after trying to close the beaches, Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) informs him that Amity is a beach town and requires that all the beaches stay open. Brody relents but is proven right when a young boy is killed. During a town meeting with lots of angry shouting a hand scratches along a blackboard. That hand belongs to Quint (Robert Shaw) who demands ten thousand dollars to catch and kill the shark now terrorizing this town. While he ponders Quint's offer and reads book after book on sharks. Brody calls in a marine biologist, Dr. Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) from the Oceanographic Institute. Hooper examines the young swimming girl's remains and determines that she was killed by a shark. Immediately following this a tiger shark is caught by a group of fishermen. Hooper, who measures the bite radius, requests to be able to examine the shark for human remains but Mayor Vaughn, who's batting a thousand at this point, refuses to allow it. That night Brody and Hooper cut it open themselves. After several days and two more attacks Hooper, Brody and Quint go on a suicidal hunt of the shark on the ocean.

What the most impressive element is how Steven Spielberg mounts tension. The frightening moments in the film are not when the shark is attacking but just before. It's all about what you don't see. By utilizing underwater cameras he suggests the shark's movements and vision. Throughout the film he creates a pattern. The music rises with a point-of-view shot of the victim and then there's an attack you barely see. Multiple times throughout the film, just to throw you off Spielberg breaks the pattern. Sure the theme plays when the shark grows near but it is always two or three seconds after you believe it will be. It's the right way to terrify your audience and Spielberg knows this and the moment where we finally see the shark, almost an hour and twenty minutes in, it provides a major shock the first time you see it. Even after seeing it many times it still proves itself as a striking image.

The performances are strong here. Particularly the three leads. I've heard stories from Dreyfuss about how Shaw made his life a living hell on the set solely because Quint makes Hooper's life a living hell. I'm not sure how true those statements are but either way it's all noticeable. Of the three I'd say Shaw turns out the best performance. He'd later play a much similar character in The Deep (also based on a book by Peter Benchley) but both are strong performances. Part of Quint's backstory is that he served aboard the World War II Portland-class cruiser USS Indianapolis. He speaks very plainly about his experiences floating in the ocean for days while his fellow crewmen drowned, succumbed to exposure or were eaten by sharks. The speech, written mostly by Shaw, highlights just why Quint hunts sharks and is a rare moment of emotion from Quint. He hunts the sharks because the idea of being hunted and eaten by a shark terrifies him. This makes his desire to kill the shark and his ultimate demise all the more palpable. There is a tragedy to the way Shaw plays Quint and we are forced to feel sympathy for him.

My only criticism for the film is that, in one scene, we are given a jump scare but as with all scares like that. Once we recover it's out of our minds. Jump scares are not scary.

This film is often credited as the first real blockbuster. If only they'd left well enough alone and we wouldn't have to remember Jaws 2, Jaws 3D and Jaws: The Revenge

★★★1/2