What makes this movie so scary and so exhilerating is that it's a monster movie about a real monster. This is a creature that has existed for thousands of years and is universally feared by everyone. We know going in that this is a movie about a man-eating shark but what Spielberg does is he takes this already very real monster and places it in a place of comfort and safety. He places it in an innocent beach resort town called Amity and into the lives of a family that we get to know and care about. Everything he does makes this experience more real, more terrifying and eventually more exciting.
The movie opens with a bang, arguably one of the best opening scenes of all time. After showing us a classic night time beach scene with a group of kids relaxing near a bonfire, a woman decides to go for a night swim and the camera follows her as she runs towards the water. The camera feels aggressive and adventurous, and it raises the adrenaline level as it follows her and the admirer chasing after her. She swims to the first buoey. Her admirer, drunk, doesn't make it past the beach. We get a wide shot of the ocean with the woman looking almost lost in it, completely alone. Everything is dark, the sky, the water, and then we get a severe closeup that creates a jolting immediacy to the scene. It feels almost like the camera itself is dangerous, and by not allowing us to see anything in her periphery she seems vulnerable as do we, watching, waiting. The mood has shifted, edgier, and we get the shark-cam, a view lurking in the water underneath her, and it gets closer and closer as we hear the iconic John Williams "Jaws" theme music gradually increasing it's ferocity. Suddenly we get the same jolting closeup of her and this is when the scene goes to the land of "HOLY SHIT." She violently submerges and we know what it is but there's still an initial shock because of the suddenness of the attack. For the remainder of the scene we see the result of something under the water attacking her. We see her rapidly being forced in different directions in the water like a rag doll, screaming, going under, resurfacing, terrified, screaming "It hurts." The entire time we don't actually see the shark. Every time something suddenly terrifying and aggressive happens to her it becomes more terrifying and shocking for us because in a way we can identify with her. We can't see what's coming either. We also can only imagine what terrible monster is doing this to her and our imaginations are way beyond the real thing. The scene is gut-wrenching and your jaw drops pretty much the entire time.
The scene shifts from night to day, we hear the crashing waves, the seagulls, we see the same waters, but the association has changed from peaceful and friendly to dangerous, and as we get to know the town of Amity we realize that something bad is going to happen to this innocent beach resort town where the biggest emergency at the moment is kids karate chopping the town fences, a town where they've never had to make a "beach closed" sign, a town where there has never been a shark attack.
The horrifying remains of the girl are found and the movie launches in to a tale of moral corruption where the town's mayor is in denial of the probability of a shark attack because he knows that if they close the beaches it will be catastrophic to the town financially with 4th of july days away. The sheriff Brody, played amazingly well by Roy Scheider, rushes around to do the right thing and the powers that be convince him not to. We know something bad is going to happen and the drama is amped up because those involved are going to be affected deeply by this. Brody wants to do something but doesn't and the mayor, in denial and being led by power and control, won't do anything. The great white shark is just waiting to take advantage of this and terrorize these waters.
The thing that I always remember most about "Jaws" is the way in which the shark attack scenes are perfectly choreographed. I already discussed the opening scene, and the combination of suspense, paranoia, and sudden terror in the remaining two beach scenes is just awesome. Spielberg uses quick-cuts and closeups of people in the water in order to create chaos and tension. In the one scene we see a closeup of a boy on a raft, a dog fetching a stick, people playing in the water, a girl going under water, a black bathing cap that looks like a shark fin, all quick cutting, and throughout all of this there is splashing water which is disorienting and leads to a further state of unease. It seems like at any moment there's going to be an attack. All of a sudden we get the shark-cam again and that classic music, and as soon as it gets to it's victim there is sudden violence, blood spraying, the raft pushed up out of the water and screaming, panicked swimmers rushing to shore. When the attack happens we get a beautiful Hitchcockian pull forward closeup of the sheriff to show his sudden awareness of this terrible thing that is happening, an iconic moment. The second attack works amazingly well because of misdirection. We get the same technique of quick cutting closeups, helicopters flying above the water, shark watchers in boats, underwater shots, and a seriously paranoid Brody. Suddenly there's a shark fin in the water and everyone panics. A whistle blows and everyone rushes out of the water. The beach is bedlam and we soon find out that it was two pranksters with a cardboard fin. Everyone relaxes, we exhale, and then, just when we think everything is o.k. a girl sees a shark in the adjacent pond and screams "Shark. There's a shark in the pond." and because we are all lulled into a sense of false security it becomes eerier, almost like it's happening in slow motion, and we are more susceptible to the fear. To up the fear factor Brody's son is in the pond as well. Once again the attack is quick, violent , and gory, and until Brody's son gets out of the water safely we are on edge. Throughout all of these scenes we don't see the shark until this last attack and only for a second. This adds to the suspense and terror. It gives it a more monstrous quality. We've seen sharks but not this one. Only our imaginations have seen this one, a mythical creature created in our minds.
Throughout the first half of the movie there is this combination of not showing us the shark but gradually revealing information about how dangerous these creatures are. Brody looks through a book on sharks and sees images of the scars from a shark attack, a shark eating through a boat, a great white's bite radius, and also learns that most shark attacks take place in three feet of water, ten feet from the beach. He also learns that rogue sharks will stay around until the food supply is gone. This makes the whole movie scarier because we know that everything that has happened on the screen is normal, not extraordinary, because it happens in real life, bringing us closer to that pre-existing primal fear of sharks. When we see the attacks we are bringing this magnified fear coupled with the suspense of not having seen this creature that we have now created in our minds. It's an explosive double whammy.
The second half of the movie is like another movie in itself. If the first part is the horror movie this is the adventure movie. It's this giant hunt between the archetypal sea captain, king of all shark hunters and the king of all sharks.
Quint, this larger than life character has been hired to hunt and kill this shark, and Brody, and Hooper, a marine scientist specializing in sharks, played by Richard Dreyfuss join him on the journey.
Quint, played by Robert Shaw, elevates this adventure to mythical levels. He has a swagger about him with his scottish accent and sea songs, and we are hypnotized by his seeming invulnerability. We are watching a powerful man in his element, walking his vessel as if it's an extension of himself. Almost every image of him is a closeup; Quint leaning against the forepeak of the boat with a grin, legs crossed, in complete control; Quint in the crow's nest gazing at the sea; Quint readying the massive fishing rod as if in his sleep.
The dynamic between a man like this, who is also incredibly arrogant, brittle, and has control issues, and the other two men is enough to make this movie great by itself. Brody is completely out of his element with no knowledge of what to do on this boat, and terrified of water. He bumbles around fearful and disoriented and Quint gives him tasks as if pampering a child. Hooper has all sorts of state of the art equipment on board the boat and Quint hates his fancy equipment and his white-collar background. He excessively orders him around and the two become rivals.
One of my favorite scenes and possibly the greatest moment in the movie is a scene taking place at night in the cabin of the boat. The three men are drunk and Quint and Hooper are comparing scars. It's obvious that both men have seen some serious action, and Brody points to Quint's arm and asks him "What's that?" What follows is a revealing story that on one level is the scariest moment in the film and the moment when we truly understand what is really motivating Quint on this hunt and previous hunts. On his arm had been a tattoo of the USS Indianapolis which he had removed. He tells the haunting story of what happened to him on the way back from delivering the atomic bomb that would be used in Hiroshima during WWII. "Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin back, from the island of Tinian Delady, just delivered the bomb. The hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour." Quint proceeds to tell a tale in which men formed themselves into box formations to protect the group, a tale in which by the first dawn one hundred men had been eaten, and by the fifth day in which he was rescued, only three hundred sixteen survived. We begin to understand why this man is so fiercely great at what he does, and why he is so hardened and strong.
The second half of the film has night scenes of silence and tranquility, both hunter and hunted patiently awaiting the other's move and during the day an exhilerating chase, involving the harpooning of barrels to the shark in order to force it to the surface. Both the men on the boat and the audience are continually impressed by the shark's strength, speed, and elusive nature. It is hunting them as well, the two sides consistently switching roles.
The reveal scene is when things really get cooking. Spielberg uses the fact that we haven't really seen the shark yet to his advantage when finally revealing it. Brody is scooping fish guts into the water, bored, and his head is turned away from the sea when out of the water comes this massive shark right up close and nearly bites brody's arm off. It's shocking because we've been used to nothing and all of a sudden this huge shark seems like it's jumping almost out of the screen at us with absolutely no warning, no shark-cam, no music, no quick cuts. It works perfectly and leads to one of the most memorable lines in movies. "We're gonna need a bigger boat." It's also perfect timing. This is the adventure, not the horror portion of the movie. Not seeing the shark served it's purpose in the first half but it's time to see the shark in all it's glory. In order to truly feel the scope of this we have to be able to almost reach out and touch this creature.
The ending doesn't disappoint. Simultaneously, the shark is chasing the boat and Quint is luring the shark into shallow waters. Quint thinks he's tricking the shark but he's so stubborn and arrogant and that becomes his undoing. He goes too fast, puts too much pressure on the engine, and fries it. It turns out the shark outsmarts Quint, attacks the stranded boat, and in the end, eats the great shark hunter. It's a classic case of a king destroying himself with the same thing that made him so great; his will, his fury, his determination, but with a single-minded blindness. Ironically, the terrified cluless brody ends up destroying the shark in the end. There is this great image of brody and hooper paddling back to shore on nothing but barrels. There's no boat, no shark, no Quint. The great hunters are dead and the companions are the only ones who have survived.
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