Jaws begins, somewhat innocently enough, with a group of young people around a fire on the beach at night. They’re smoking and drinking and talking with each other in small groups. A young woman and young man make eye contact, and he starts to follow her after she walks away from the fire. He winds up having to try to catch up to her as she runs toward the water, but he’s too drunk to run as fast as she is and take his clothes off at the same time. She dives in, leaving him lying on the beach. A few horrifying moments later, we watch as something beneath the surface violently attacks her. She will be the first victim of an especially aggressive and particularly vindictive shark. We just don’t know that yet (unless we have read the best-selling novel by Peter Benchley upon which the film was based).
The overall plot is certainly familiar to people who haven’t even seen the film. After it’s clear that a shark is swimming off the shore of Amity, the police chief and a couple of other people try to keep people safe. They find themselves stymied by the townspeople who worry that closing the beaches and keeping people out of the water during the summer would be disastrous to the island’s financial success. That they would personally benefit from the beaches remaining open is certainly an important factor. However, the town can withstand only so many deaths, and the killing of a young boy in full view of a crowded beach leads to a ridiculous bounty hunt to rid the island of this dangerous predator.
Much of the second half of the film takes place aboard the Orca, the ship owned by Quint, a local “expert” shark hunter. He, the police chief, and an oceanographer the chief has consulted venture into the ocean in search of a so-called “rogue” shark, and that’s when the real adventure begins. The banter aboard the Orca is some of the best dialog in the film, and even if many of the lines have become justifiably famous (“you’re gonna need a bigger boat”), they still resonate. It’s a back-and-forth hunt that builds in intensity the longer they’re at sea, and the talk about the journey is a welcome relief from the long stretches of waiting.
The acting in Jaws is uniformly good. As Police Chief Brody, Roy Scheider is stoic, deadpan, and solid as the only person in this small island town who tries to do the right thing and close down the beaches. Richard Dreyfus plays oceanographer Matt Hooper with a great deal of humor and smart ass attitude. Hooper is the one who tries to convince the leaders of Amity that the threat from the shark is significant, but he only manages to convince Brody. As Brody’s wife, Lorraine Gary brings a warmth and vulnerability and tenderness to a role that she would play over and over again in most of the unnecessary sequels that followed.
I’d like to single out Murray Hamilton, though, a great character actor, in the role of Mayor Larry Vaught. He’s so good as the guy who puts money first, the guy who gets it all wrong, the guy whose misguided decisions cause so much death. He’s so representative of the kind of small-town politics where personal interests and private agendas become the reasons for decision making. Who counts as an “islander” and who doesn’t clearly matters in Amity, and Hamilton is especially adept at showing the mayor’s ability to undermine Brody’s authority because the chief wasn’t born on the island. Yes, a shark might be killing people in the waters off Amity, but the Fourth of July holiday is one of the biggest moneymaking days of the year, you see? Well, you would see if you were from Amity.
Robert Shaw as Quint deserves a special mention as well. He’s wild. It’s as if he’s decided that this is a pirate movie, and he’s the most seasoned pirate of them all. He looks at everyone else with a sense of derision and yet finds most of their behavior amusing. Shaw can also play drunk better than almost anyone. Still, he’s quite capable of being spellbinding such as when Quint shares stories about what happened on the U.S.S. Indianapolis at the end of World War II, one of the most famous shark stories of all time. Yes, of course, he’s clearly riffing on Ahab from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick at times, but when it’s this entertaining, who cares? Shaw takes what is truly a supporting part and steals the movie from the actors with the larger roles.
As almost everyone knows, it’s almost an hour into the film before the shark actually makes an appearance on screen. Famously, the mechanical shark would work just fine until it entered the water, and then it would not cooperate. Director Steven Spielberg and his crew had to become very creative in building tension and giving a sense of the shark’s presence without it physically showing up on the screen. One of the mechanical sharks is now on display at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, and it’s a treat to have it dangling above you in clear view as you ascend a staircase.
The cinematography and editing in Jaws are first rate. Watching it again after taking and teaching film studies classes makes me appreciate its achievements even more. It’s particularly good at conveying a sense of panic and fear in the crowd scenes. They’re very carefully choreographed and effective. I didn’t know what a “Vertigo shot” was in 1975, but even without that knowledge, when the camera zooms in on Scheider’s face on the beach as he watches a shark attack, you feel tense even if you couldn’t explain how or why. That famous music by John Williams certainly adds to the film’s suspense. Who could have guessed that two memorable notes would have such an impact, but without the shark itself on the screen for much of the film, the music carries a lot of power with those notes.
Jaws was one of the first and biggest summer blockbusters of the modern era of filmmaking, and it’s nice to see that the Academy still had respect for a film that was released in the middle of the year. Nowadays, it might have been forgotten by the time the Christmas rush of “prestigious” awards-bait movies appears. Spielberg was famously snubbed in the Best Director category, but I think the Academy has perhaps made that oversight up to him in the intervening years.
I recently watched Jaws on an IMAX screen for the 50th anniversary of its release, and I’m both in awe of what I missed back in 1975 by seeing it on a much smaller screen and very grateful that I didn’t see it in such a large format back then. I saw it for the first time at the beautiful Genesee Theater in Waukegan, Illinois, and was forced to sit in the front row of the theater because my younger brother, who brought his babysitter with us, was obsessed with sitting in the front row for movies, not a location I’m particularly going to choose myself if there are any options.
So many people have seen this film, so I don’t think I’m spoiling any key plot points by telling you about a moment that was scary enough for me on the regular screen at the Genessee. Police Chief Brody and Hooper are investigating a seemingly abandoned boat owned by one of the local fishermen. Hooper dives into the night waters and discovers an enormous hole on the side of the boat. There’s also a large tooth embedded in the hole, clear evidence that a shark is responsible for this destruction. At the moment that this was happening onscreen, I was trying to see the color of the M&Ms my brother’s babysitter had given me. (There was this thing about green M&Ms back then, but you can check out that urban myth for yourself.)
The babysitter, in her eagerness to make sure that I didn’t miss this dramatic moment involving the discovery of the tooth, tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up from my M&Ms-filled hand just in time to see a head pop out of the hole in the side of the boat. Frightened, I threw M&Ms all over the rows of seats near us. Needless to say, this has become THE story of our watching Jaws during its initial release, and I am reminded of it from time to time on social media. Having the 50th anniversary screening being so prominently advertised did not help.
Oscar Wins: Best Sound, Best Editing, and Best Original Dramatic Score
Other
Nominations:
Best Picture
