Review: Jaws

      Jaws (1975) was directed by Steven Spielberg and is based on the novel of the same by Peter Benchley. Upon its release in the summer of 1975, Jaws became the highest grossing film ever made up to that point, making it the first blockbuster movie. The movie had such a cultural impact that beach attendance dropped because people were so scared of going into the water.

      The movie’s plot is fairly straight forward. A killer shark begins attacking people in a New England resort town which causes the town’s police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), a young marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and Quint (Robert Shaw) an eccentric and obsessed shark hunter to team up and try to kill it.

      I actually have not seen Jaws from start to finish. I have seen the whole movie in bits and pieces before this point. Jaws is one of those movies that you come across on TV and no matter what point the movie is at you can watch it until the credits roll and not feel like you’ve missed anything. Goodfellas (1991) and The Godfather (1972) are the same way because they are more about the memorable characters and the memorable scenes than they about the plot. Every scene in Jaws has at least one memorable moment. As a result, this film is perfectly paced. It only takes about an hour to set up the main conflicts of the film and to flesh out the main characters. The second hour makes up the film’s climax as our three heroes do battle with the killer Great White Shark. I don’t think there is a film that uses its two-hour runtime as efficiently as Jaws does. Every aspiring filmmaker should watch Jaws because the editing and direction are flawless.

        The best move Steven Spielberg made during the making of Jaws (which probably saved his career) was to not to show the shark at all until the final act of the film. Originally the shark was supposed to be seen throughout the film eating its victims, but there was one problem. The mechanical shark that was used constantly broke down due to the fact that they were filming in salt water which damaged the shark’s inner workings. Spielberg took a page out of Alfred Hitchcock’s playbook by sticking the camera in the water and not showing the shark, but instead film what the shark was seeing from its point of view. The shark attack scenes were also filmed above the water and showed the victims writhing and screaming in horror. As it turns out, this added to the suspense as not seeing the shark is more terrifying than knowing where the shark is. Not showing the shark also was a great move in hindsight because in 2017, scenes showing a mechanical shark eating people would not have aged well due to new innovations like CGI. This is one of the many reasons why Jaws is a timeless film.

        The suspense in Jaws is one of the most unique things about the film. It’s a fun kind of suspense where you find yourself laughing nervously to yourself once the scare has run its course. That’s one of the reason Jaws is so easy to watch over and over.  It’s scary, but in a way that doesn’t keep you up at night. It only scares you when you go into the water.

        The cast in this movie is one of the best in cinema history. Roy Schieder’s performance as the hydrophobic Chief Brody is stellar as he tries to find a way to keep his town and family safe from the killer shark in the face of a complacent mayor who wants to keep the beaches open for Fourth of July, which provides the lion’s share of the town’s budget.  Scheider performance also touched me because it showed with very little dialogue how much Brody cares about his family. The scene where he and his son imitate each other at the dinner table is exactly something a father would do with his young son. The performances from Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper and Robert Shaw as Quint are phenomenal largely due to the fact they have such great chemistry together. Quint, the old-school fisherman can’t stand Hooper, the college educated rich boy who thinks he can kill the shark with fancy technology. In reality the tension between Hooper and Quint was real because Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss couldn’t stand each other.  In fact, the conflicts the two actors had was similar to the characters they portrayed. Shaw didn’t respect Dreyfuss because he never acted in the theater and Dreyfuss couldn’t stand Shaw’s heavy drinking while he was on the set. Speaking of which, Robert Shaw delivered the best performance of his career despite the fact that he was completely hammered for most of his scenes. The only scene Shaw wasn’t drunk for was the “U.S.S. Indianapolis” scene. This is the best scene in the whole film and was filmed in one take. The dynamic chemistry that the characters have in this film is also a byproduct of not showing the shark that often on camera. This allowed Spielberg to focus on the dialogue between the characters and is responsible for many of Jaws’ funniest moments.

        The score for Jaws was composed by John Williams. Williams would win his first Oscar for Best Original Score for his work on Jaws. It was his first of many iconic movie scores and is still one of his best. The ominous and unrelenting  music that plays whenever the shark is about to attack is instantly recognizable to people across the world. Besides that, the music that plays while the protagonists hunt down the shark is superb as well. It truly gives the audience the feeling of what it’s like to be on an adventure on the high sea. The art of the soundtrack is a lost art in moviemaking and I don’t think Jaws would have been as successful without it.

        Jaws is one of the greatest movies ever made. I can’t think of one flaw that affected my enjoyment of this film and every time I watch it, I notice something that I hadn’t seen before. If you haven’t seen Jaws before, then what the hell are you waiting for?  It’s on Netflix right now!

Overall Rating: *****

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