On My Shelves: JAWS

 

A long time ago – forty years ago, to be exact – summer was considered the "dead time" for movies. It was assumed that most people wouldn't go to movie theaters in the summer, preferring to pursue other activities. But in 1975, that changed, and the "summer blockbuster" was born, with the release of one of Stephen Spielberg's true masterpieces: Amazon instant Video link for Jaws.

Jaws was also the very first movie I ever saw by myself in the theater. No one else in my family was interested in it, so I went to see it on my own… and I'm glad I did.

Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is a New York cop transplanted to Amity Island (a fictionalized version of Martha's Vineyard). Amity seems an idyllic location compared to the streets of New York – although Brody himself has a fear of water and refuses to swim or even go on a boat if he can avoid it.

But then a swimmer is killed by something in the waters off Amity Island, and Brody finds himself plunged into the welter of vacation-island politics and the terror of an invisible killer.

The autopsy of Chrissy, the swimmer, reveals that she was killed by a shark – a very large shark. Brody begins the natural process of closing the beaches in preparation for determining whether this is an isolated incident or not, but he is swiftly stopped by the Mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), who points out just how much the community depends on "summer dollars" (in another scene, a townsperson says that even twenty-four hours is equal to three weeks at other times of the year), and that it's better to say this was a boating accident. "You yell 'barracuda', and people say 'huh?'. You yell 'shark'… and you've got a panic on your hands on the Fourth of July."

Brody has little choice at that point but to aquiesce, but with the beaches still open, he tries to watch them, to see if there is indeed something there. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to stop a shark if you aren't literally right on top of it, and a little boy is attacked right in front of a crowd of beachgoers.

This triggers a frenzy of reaction; the natives of Amity know that they must do something to eliminate this killer, to convince people that the beaches are safe, or they lose their livelihood for at least a year. A reward of three thousand dollars is posted for the shark's carcass (about $13,000 in today's money), and a mob of weekend warriors descends upon Amity.

In the midst of the chaos appears a bearded, inoffensive-looking young man, Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus), oceanographer and shark researcher. Hooper confirms that it was indeed a very large shark that killed Chrissy. When a large tiger shark is caught, it temporarily seems that the horror is over. But Hooper, examining the shark, finds that its mouth simply isn't large enough to have caused the wounds. A late-night autopsy of the shark's stomach proves this; there are no traces of either victim present. Hooper deduces that they are dealing with a rogue shark that has staked out a territory near Amity, and practically drags Brody onto Hooper's research boat to see if they can locate the shark and prove their case to the still-skeptical Mayor.

What they find is the battered, sinking wreck of a fisherman's boat. Diving beneath, Hooper finds a huge tooth ("the size of a shot glass") embedded in the wreckage … and then drops it in shock as the corpse of the fisherman drops into view from within the boat.

Without the tooth or other hard evidence, Vaughn still refuses to close the beaches, and instead advertises that the shark responsible was caught and killed.

During the afternoon, a pair of children causes a panic with a fake shark fin – but at the same time, the real shark enters the "pond", a sheltered saltwater area, and kills another boater in front of Brody's own children.

With this, Brody can finally force a shattered Vaughn to let him do the one thing that might help: hire shark-hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) to track down and kill the shark – something he has said he will do, not for three thousand, but for ten. "For that you get the head… the tail… the whole damn thing."

Quint accepts the contract, and his ship the Orca sets out – with Quint, Matt Hooper, and – facing his own demons – Sheriff Brody as crew.

But they have no idea what they are about to face…

Jaws remains one of the most powerful, perfectly made movies I have ever seen. I was fortunate enough to be able to see it in first release, and – just recently – in the theater for a Fortieth Anniversary celebration. It holds up well today. Yes, there are aspects that are dated (most importantly, the entire "rogue shark" hypothesis has been long busted), but overall it still works in a way that few movies ever do, even when first released.

Even the mechanical shark, while more obviously fake for modern audiences, remains an impressive and creditable effort. We could do better today, yes, but it was a hell of a piece of work and can pass well enough even now.

Jaws is also pretty much the canonical example of "movie was better than the book". The original novel is a slow-moving, murky bit of work, whose main plot is obscured by rather clumsy and unnecessary character interactions (including Matt Hooper having an affair with Brody's wife; this version of Matt Hooper also ends up very dead). Spielberg stripped the book to its key essentials, and the result is a vastly superior story – something that Peter Benchley himself agreed with.

While the shark's presence and actions drive the plot, in the end what makes Jaws work is the interaction of the three main characters: Brody, Hooper, and Quint. At first adversarial in nature – especially between Quint, the ex-military man of the sea, and Hooper, the college-educated ivory-tower researcher – the three men develop a closer bond as they travel in search of the shark, and as they come to grips with the fact that this is no ordinary animal but something almost elemental in its power and extraordinarily cunning.

The pacing of Jaws is absolutely perfect. We are given just enough quiet moments, and occasional comedic moments, to allow us to recover from each shock, each moment of horror, meaning that we can feel the next one fully, immerse ourselves in the moment and become the invisible fourth participants in the hunt for the mightiest predator on Earth.

The film is also filled with bon mots, great and quotable lines. Perhaps the most famous is one which was actually ad-libbed by Roy Scheider and – like many other examples – was recognized by Spielberg as the right line for the moment: "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Similarly, the scene in which the three men compare scars was, apparently, done when they actually were drunk, and the chilling recounting of the Indianapolis disaster by Quint was improvised entirely by Robert Shaw.

One minor element of that scene, however, hints at something which was eliminated from the movie. During the scar-comparison, Brody pulls up his shirt, looking down. He doesn't say anything, but his face shows he is recalling something traumatic. I have a vague memory of reading something that indicated that when Brody was very young, he had encountered a shark in the water, and that was why he had a fear of water; other entries say he had a near-drowning experience, but then why would he be looking down as though there was a scar?

Jaws changed the face of cinema. It is regarded as the first summer blockbuster, the first movie to go beyond one hundred million dollars in first release (equivalent to about 450 million today), and the top earner of all time until two years later, when Star Wars transformed the world. Jaws, however, was the movie that made Star Wars and all the summer movies possible, proving that not only would people go to the movies in the summer, they'd go in droves.

Another element of the movie that undoubtedly contributed heavily to its success was its hammering, implacable theme, written by John Williams. Williams has several classic themes to his credit, and this is considered one of his very best. The "Jaws theme" is instantly recognizable and as chilling as the sight of a Great White Shark cutting through the water towards you.

I'm not sure, honestly, how many times I've seen Jaws, in whole and in part. It is one of the most rewatchable movies ever, due to the characters, the lines, the visuals all working together in a seamless whole. All that I know for sure is that I found it nearly as thrilling to watch today, forty years later, as I did in 1975, sitting alone in an almost-empty theater. I didn't jump quite as much at the key points – I knew they were coming, this time – but even then, I felt the tension, the shock, the suspense, even now, after all these years.

If you've never seen Jaws, you should. If you have… it's still worth seeing again.