This may be the hardest review I ever had to write. You see, I’m a fanatic, or rather a finatic, about the movie Jaws. It is my favorite movie. I consider it absolute perfection. So, I find writing about it–to do it justice–daunting.
Think about what this fish story did. It launched the career of Steven Spielberg, perhaps the most well known director of the late century. Sure, he had a solid career going into the movie and had the excellent Duel already under his belt and Sugarland Express but you can’t really compare to the commercial, and artistic though that is often overlooked, triumph of Jaws.
The film is often credited with launching the Summer Blockbuster trend. They distributed the film wide in hundreds of theaters at once. Prior to that, generally the big films came out in the fall or “award season” and they didn’t open wide. Traditionally, a number of copies of the film would be made and they would tour from territory to territory. I remember in the 80’s going to “second run” theaters that gave you a cheaper ticket, but you also had a copy of the film that had scratches in it, muffled sound, and some weird hair on the lens for the third reel. The good old days.
Richard Dreyfuss already had American Graffiti on his resume, but he was no A-lister at this point in his career. This is the film that became his calling card launching his storied career.
This film was also the film that taught many a young fan and future filmmaker the importance of a score in a film. Try to watch this movie without the music. It loses more than half of its impact. John Williams had already collaborated with Spielberg on Sugarland, but this is arguably his masterwork. The building of suspense really was on his score’s shoulders since so many of the special effects with the robotic shark were not working as planned. The score, and a set of three sun faded yellow barrels, kept the film afloat in its third act.
I always point to how important character is to a film. The characters of Hooper (Dreyfuss) and Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) play off each other well, guided by a brilliant screenplay by comedy writer Carl Gottlieb, but they have heart to spare. The fisherman Quint could have been a one note caricature were it not for the expert acting of Robert Shaw. You really love these characters and they draw you into the dangerous sea with them. Jaws 2 lost both Hooper and Quint and comes off hollow in comparison. I still think it is a much maligned sequel unfairly, but it just can’t come close to the original because the heart was eaten right out of it.
Spoiler alert there.
There are so many brilliant scenes. Who can forget the two idiots fishing off the dock when the fish starts pulling the dock out to sea? How about the Chief and his smallest boy playing “mirror” at the dining room table? Or a half assed autopsy on a fish? Slapping a police chief because he “knew and let people go swimming anyway”? The acts of violence, while less than originally intended and less than the followup, carry quite a wallop. The Kitner boy death with a great use of the “Vertigo” effect (that most people now call the “Jaws” shot)…or the attack of a small row boat in the pond…or one of the most often discussed opening attack sequences in horror film history?
So where does one begin talking about a seminal work like this?
Maybe it’s best to never end, but leave everything as a beginning. Let a new audience discover this movie that clearly still holds up all these decades later. It’s best maybe to let the shark do all the talking.