Jaws is a 1975 Thriller directed by Steven Spielberg it was based
on a novel by Peter Benchley that shared the same title. Jaws is often regarded
as the starting point for the movies industry’s yearly ‘summer Blockbuster’.
Jaws begins with a girl named Chrissie Watkins (Susan
Backlinie), she leaves a party on to go swimming. While she is out in the ocean
near a buoy, she is attacked by something from below, which in turns drags her
down under the water.
She ends up listed as missing and her gruesome remains are found
washed up on a beach by chief of police Martin Brody (Roy Scheider). The
medical examiner later concludes that a shark killed her. Brody then decides it
is a good idea to shut the beaches to avoid further incidents, but is overruled
by mayor Larry Vaughan (Murray Hamilton), because he doesn’t want to ruin the forthcoming
tourist season, the town's primary source of income. The medical examiner then
lies about the death claiming it to be nothing more than a boating accident.
Brody reluctantly has
no choice but to follow along with the lie, this however was a grave mistake as
the shark goes on to kill a young boy swimming along the shore. This leads to
the boy’s Mother placing a large bounty on the shark, sparking an amateur shark
hunting frenzy along the beach; however, a local professional shark hunter named
Quint (Robert Shaw) offers to kill the shark for $10,000. A large tiger shark
is caught by a group of fishermen, leading the town to believe the problem is over.
Brody asks to examine its stomach contents, but Vaughan refuses, as he wants
the whole thing to be over. Later that night Brody and Marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss)secretly
open the tiger shark's stomach, only to discover it contains no human remains,
meaning it could not possibly be the attacker.
This leads to Brody, Quint and Hooper heading out to sea to find the
shark. Only to end up being hunted themselves.
One of the key factors that makes jaws such a successful
thriller are the cleaver use of camera angles to create suspense and shock
audiences. One key factor is the fact that the shark hardly has any physical on
screen time. The viewer’s instead get to see things from the sharks point of
view as he swims thru the water towards victims, watches on from a distance or
as he is eating. “We see the shark close
up, we look in its relentless eye, and it just plain feels like a shark.” (Ebert, 2000) Viewers are also led to fear
the sharks power by being shown the left overs from his destructive path. All
of this adds together to create very tense and scary moments, where you genuinely
fill that this could be happening, and is not just some cheesy robotic shark
nomming on actors. “Spielberg knows
exactly how the human mind works, and he uses that knowledge to plumb the
elemental fear buried deep within.” (Scott, 2012)
Sound wise, the film has a very good score composed by John
Williams, the music just before an attack is probably one of the most known
horror songs of all time and can instantly be recognised, and associated with
Jaws around the world. “The use of
silence is far more powerful and effective than the score” (Ewing, 2010).
However, complete silence often plays a huge role in horror movies and Jaws is
no exception. Scenes where it is dead quiet and all you can hear is the ocean
are often more chilling then some of the attack scenes. For example the scene
at the end of the movie with the trio battling the shark has very little music of
fake sound effects, this adds to the realism and great sense of danger these
men face in their struggle.
Quotes:
1: Roger Ebert: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jaws-1975
3: James Blake Ewing: http://cinemasights.com/?p=3960
Images:
Hey Lekti,
ReplyDeleteA few general pointers to think about as you think about your final reviews: proportionally, there's too much recounting of the plot in this review. Reviews can benefit from a synopsis to put the critique into context, but you don't need as much as this. To put it in another way; if this review was a plate of curry and rice (with curry being the spicy insightful critical bit and rice being plot) there's too much rice and not enough curry!