Set in the fictional Northeastern town of Amity (a clever tool in and of itself to conjure up the auditory similarity to Amityville and make us associate it with terror and evil) “Jaws” is so much more than the shock-value gore flick that tries to scare you with an unscary monster much the way a movie like “Godzilla” I thought it was going to be. In addition to being a psychological thriller that exploits some of the most primal of human fears, it also flirts with the concept of corruption, politicking and endangering the lives of everyday citizens for economic and Public Relations benefits, kind of like how we killed our own people by blowing up those towers, but that is more of an opinion so I digress.
Due to an irrational fear of water that first began to manifest itself when I was 5 years old and almost drowned in a Jacuzzi at Wild Waters Water Park I didn’t learn to swim until I was 13 years old (true story, make fun all you want, I don’t feel this emotion you call “shame”). In spite of this though, I wasn’t convinced that “Jaws” would be all that scary to me because the movie isn’t about drowning, it is about getting devoured by a shark that would never come that close to shore on a public beach in real life. However the ingenious thing about “Jaws” is that neither one of these devices are used as the basis of the film’s fear element; instead the overall theme seems to be that the scariest things are the ones we can’t see. This idea surfaces numerous times throughout and does so in several different ways; whether it is seeing the damage the shark has done after the fact to show us what it is capable of or the more “unseen” evil of backdoor politicking and shifty goings-on.
The first victim of the shark is a drunken girl who is cavorting on the beach with a guy she just met (presumably since he asks her name). After a few drinks and a little sex the girl decides to go skinny dipping in the ocean. The shark pursues the girl in the water as the ominous, simplistic and now legendary music plays. There is so much about this opening sequence that lends itself to the expressionist horror films of the early part of the 20th century; the clanging of buoy alarms and ship bells in the distance replace the tolling of cathedral bells and scary clocks and the underwater point-of-view shots from the perspective of the shark as he stalks his prey borrow heavily from the marine moviemaking techniques perfected in “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
Despite the gruesomeness of her demise there is something about this opening scene that is darkly poetic. And to think, if this movie would have been made ten years later this girl would have known that everyone who drinks underage and has sex in a somewhat public place always gets killed by some kind of monster. I guess Stephen Spielberg created a formula with this opening. Because it is so dark outside she never sees the shark coming, though the fact that it is so deadly quiet makes this scene even more chilling since it establishes the stealthness of the shark.
"Back home we got a taxidermy man. He gonna have a heart attack when he see what I brung him!" (Quint, "Jaws")
Roy Scheider plays Police Chief Brody, a New York cop again, though in a vastly superior and more developed way than in films like “The French Connection” and “The Seven-Ups.” This time he is a transplant who is unfamiliar with the New England surroundings and behaves as such. Also, it is important to note that even though he is Amity’s Chief of Police, he is still relatively naïve, his reaction to the discovery of the first victim as well as his surprise when local elected officials attempt to bury the shark story.
It turns out everyone in the Amity political system minus Brody is hell bent on going through with the cover-up. Economics are as key a factor as public image, as the beach’s bread and butter is the summer tourist season. The Mayor, other deputies, even the medical examiner all downplay the seriousness of the situation and defy Brody’s orders to close the beaches. It isn't until a little boy falls prey to the shark that the citizens express any kind of outrage or trepidation.
Even after the attack though, the bureaucracy still wishes to sweep the incident under the carpet. When a tiger shark is captured off the coast it is proudly put on display and advertised as the shark that has been causing all the terror even though they know this is not the case. Brody finds an unlikely ally in the form of Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) a shark expert who instantly calls bullshit on the tiger shark story. The addition of a mercenary fisherman/shark hunter known as Quint (Robert Shaw) creates a protagonist trio that is among the best ever assembled for a film as each man is distinctly different in personality as well as their motivations for wanting to capture the shark.
The movies takes on a sort of “Old Man and the Sea”/”Moby Dick” feel as the three men set out in Quint’s boat to capture the shark. The pursuit of the shark and subsequent underwater encounter scenes completely make up for the couple of silly scenes where the shark emerges from the water looking phony as hell. It is also in the pursuit of the shark that the film becomes eerily psychological, particularly when Hooper goes into the water in a shark cage (which proves to be worthless against the shark itself) to attempt to harpoon the shark with a sort of jerry-rigged poison spear. The outline of the shark swimming below the boat, the ripples in the water as he draws closer and the physical damage to the shark cage does more to paralyze you with fear than any of the more violent and, let’s face it, hokey scenes where the shark mauls people on the beach.
Brody and Hooper survive the assault and manage to blow the shark to bits. What easily could have been an anti-climactic swim back to shore or an overly sappy reunion scene between the two turns into a perfect lighthearted and somewhat silly ending as the two laugh and crack jokes as they float off towards land together. This ending not only rounds out the intensity of the previous several minutes nicely but also homages classic film as the heroes ride off into the proverbial sunset.
Overall the two things that impress me the most about the movie are the limited amount of times we actually see the shark (this causes it to not be redundant and also shows that the script and the atmospheric shooting were good enough to not have to rely on the shark) and the impressive amount of film lore in the film, particularly with the clever references and tips-of-the-cap to other movies that are found throughout.
Though I probably would be wasting my time if I were to explore the sequels…
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