'Jaws' movie review

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"Jaws" (1975)

(c) 1975 Universal Pictures


Directed by Steven Spielberg

Written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb

Based on the novel by Peter Benchley

Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton

Brody: You're gonna need a bigger boat.

Before Avatar.

Before Titanic.

Before Star Wars, E.T., or Raiders of the Lost Ark, there was....

Jaws.

Released on June 20, 1975, director Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel about a New England community terrorized by a predatory great white shark was the first of the modern blockbusters. With a script co-written by Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, Jaws features powerful performances by actors Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss, as well as an Oscar-winning score by composer John Williams.

Tom Cassidy: What's your name again?
Christine 'Chrissie' Watkins: Chrissie.
Tom Cassidy: Where are we going?
Christine 'Chrissie' Watkins: Swimming

Set in and around the fictional Amity Island, Jaws is an effective horror/thriller film that works for various reasons. Its focus is more on the characters than it is on exploitative gore and violence. Additionally, the movie's plot is streamlined and straightforward, without some of the novel's darker and unpleasant subplots. In Jaws, a great white shark attacks swimmers off the shores of a summer resort town, starting with a young skinny-dipper named Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) who dies 
while swimming alone at night.

Mayor Vaughn: Martin, it's all psychological. You yell ‘barracuda,’ everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell ‘shark,’ we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July

At first, the local politicos, led by Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) try to cover up the first shark attack. As he explains to Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) in defense of the town’s leaders’ decision to keep the beaches open, Amity is a tourist haven that depends on “summer dollars.”

Vaughn thinks the “accident” that killed Chrissie Watkins is an isolated affair and orders the beaches to remain open for business. But the shark has staked out the waters as its new feeding ground and kills a boy named Alex Kintner (Jeffrey Voorhees) only a few yards away from the beach.

 This incident forces the reluctant Mayor Vaughn and his town council cronies to take action. After Mrs. Kintner (Lee Fierro) places a bounty on the shark, the politicians take a belated half-measure that pleases no one: the beaches will be closed, but not on the all-important Fourth of July weekend.

Hooper: Boys, oh boys... I think he's come back for his noon feeding.

Luckily for Amity, Chief Brody is made of sterner stuff. First, he asks oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) to confirm his theory that a shark is stalking the waters off the shores of Amity Island.
Quint: [seeing Hooper's equipment] What are you? Some kind of half-assed astronaut?
Quint: Jesus H Christ, when I was a boy, every little squirt wanted to be a harpooner or a sword fisherman. What d'ya have there - a portable shower or a monkey cage?
Hooper: Anti-shark cage.
Quint: Anti-shark cage. You go inside the cage?
[Hooper nods]
Quint: Cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water. Our shark.
[sings ]Quint: Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again.

Brody also hires Quint (Robert Shaw), owner-master of the fishing boat Orca,, to take Hooper and him out to sea to hunt for the rogue shark. Quint is an experienced seaman with a colorful personality.

In contrast to Brody’s Everyman stand-in for the viewer and Hooper's rich boy-turned-scientist, Quint is seemingly a force of nature. He is a cheerfully profane captain/shark hunter, half Captain Ahab, half Captain Bligh. A Navy veteran who served in World War II, Quint barely tolerates Brody and Hooper’s presence aboard his vessel but wants to catch and kill the deadly white shark.

My Take

The terrifying motion picture from the terrifying No. 1 best seller.

Director Steven Spielberg’s version of Jaws is a rare jewel of the action-thriller genre. Like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, it is one of the few book adaptations that is better than its literary source.

This transformation came about because the then 27-year-old filmmaker insisted that several secondary plots, including an affair between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper, were not to be included in the movie. Spielberg wanted the audience to relate to the characters, so he left out the novel’s soap opera-like elements and focused on the action-adventure parts instead.
Richard Dreyfuss.  Photo by Jason Merritt for Getty

Hooper: I'm not going to waste my time arguing with a man who's lining up to be a hot lunch.

Spielberg also believed that Jaws needed humor to lighten the movie’s emotional tone so it would not be a dark and unpleasant horror story. To inject the necessary levity, Spielberg hired actor-writer Carl Gottlieb to co-write the script with novelist Peter Benchley.

Thus, Jaws’ first two acts are only loosely based on the novel, while its third act is more closely based on the chapters about the hunt for the shark.

Spielberg also decided to shoot Jaws at sea instead of in a Hollywood studio tank. At first, this choice was disastrous. Bad weather caused costly delays in principal photography, cast and crew members became seasick, and Spielberg’s judgment was put in question. Even worse, the film’s mechanical shark did not work as well as the director hoped. As a result, Spielberg had to keep his monster offscreen for much of the film.

However, this technical problem proved to be providential and contributed to Jaws’ success. Without intending to, Spielberg managed to make the shark’s non-appearance seem more menacing and frightening.

Whether by accident or design, Spielberg takes a cinematic play from director Alfred Hitchcock’s playbook. By not showing us the great white shark until late in the movie, Spielberg creates a sense of growing tension and unease. We fear what we can’t see, especially when we are swimming in the ocean. In Jaws,we only know danger is near when John Williams’ two-note shark motif plays in the background and Spielberg’s camera shows a vulnerable potential victim in the dark blue waters of the North Atlantic.

Jaws is also a character-driven picture, which is rare in the action-horror genre. Screenwriters Gottlieb and Benchley (with uncredited assists from Howard Sackler, John Milius, and actor-playwright Robert Shaw) focus more on the human players of the story rather than on the blood-and-gore elements. They give their mismatched trio of shark hunters - Brody, Hooper, and Quint - clearly defined human traits that allows audiences to identify with and root for them as they go off on their dangerous shark hunt.

41 years after its release, Jaws is still one of the greatest adventure movies ever made. It’s also one of the most influential films in history. In 1975, its domestic box office gross of $260 million set a record that lasted until Star Wars’ theatrical run in 1977. Per Box Office Mojo, Jaws is the seventh top-grossing film of all time when the effects of inflation are factored in.

Perhaps more significantly, Jaws marked Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age as a filmmaker. His youthful arrogance and insistence on perfection contributed to many of the movie’s production woes, but Spielberg managed to come up with a winner for Universal Pictures, the studio behind Jaws. As producer David Brown predicted when he convinced the director to not quit and go off to make another movie, Jaws’ success allowed Spielberg to make the films that he wanted to make.

Good thing, then, that the young director listened to Brown’s pep talk, because the producer’s prediction came true. After Jaws, Spielberg went on to direct Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and Lincoln.

Blu-ray Specifications: Universal 100th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray + DVD)

Video
  • Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (29.64 Mbps)
  • Resolution: 1080p
  • Aspect ratio: 2.36:1
  • Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
  • English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
  • English: DTS Mono
  • French: DTS 5.1
  • Spanish: DTS 5.1
Subtitles
  • English SDH, French, Spanish
Discs
  • 50GB Blu-ray Disc
  • Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
  • DVD copy
  • BD-Live
  • D-Box
  • Mobile features
Packaging
  • DigiBook
Playback
  • Region free
Miscellaneous
  • Studio: Universal Pictures
  • MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance suggested)
  • Running Time: 124 minutes
  • Blu-ray Release Date: July 2, 2013

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