Jaws
A bonafide, unquestionable masterpiece
Directed By: Steven Spielberg
Other Notable Films From Spielberg: Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan
Starring: Roy Scheider, a giant great white shark, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
Screenplay By: Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb (adapted from the novel Jaws, written by Benchley)
Movie Synopsis: Three men attempt to kill a shark that is terrorizing a small New England beach town.
Signature Line: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
The production for Jaws was besieged with issues. Key actors were reportedly at odds with one another routinely because of their contradicting personalities.1 The script seemed to need to be rewritten every 15 minutes. The Atlantic Ocean (which is where Spielberg opted to shoot nearly all of the water work) refused to cooperate with any and all plans or filming itineraries. And the giant mechanical shark2 that was built as the centerpiece of the movie rarely ever worked.
The trouble was so merciless and so endless, in fact, that by the end of things, the movie’s budget had more than doubled and its shooting schedule had more than tripled. It was a disaster. A proper catastrophe. An honest to God nightmare scenario.
But then the movie came out. And none of that mattered anymore.
Miraculously, every single one of the film’s issues inadvertently worked in service of it, forming together to create something unanimously regarded as a masterpiece. The KEY ACTORS REGULARLY AT ODDS BECAUSE OF THEIR CONTRADICTING PERSONALITIES thing ended up creating an undeniable and intoxicating on-screen chemistry. The SCRIPT THAT SEEMED TO NEED TO BE REWRITTEN EVERY 15 MINUTES thing ended up establishing Spielberg’s savant-level ability to tap dance his way between acid raindrops. The ATLANTIC OCEAN THAT REFUSED TO COOPERATE WITH ANY AND ALL PLANS OR FILMING ITINERARIES thing helped give the movie a legitimacy impossible to replicate in a water tank. And the GIANT MECHANICAL SHARK THAT RARELY EVER WORKED thing forced Spielberg to figure out ways of relaying the sense that a killer shark was lurking in the area without being able to show it.
Jaws was instantly a hit,3 and eventually a pop-culture phenomenon;4 a film so massively successful that it not only reshaped movies, but also moviemaking as an idea.5
And it all happened because a bunch of shit went terribly wrong first.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Jaws
0:51: I can hear this screenshot. That Dun-Nun sound. The most iconic two-note combination in the history of movies, and possibly music. It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.
0:52: P.S. How about this: Spielberg actually hated the score the first time he heard composer John Williams’s idea for it. He’s talked about it a bunch in the years since the movie’s release. He wanted something more intricate, and more complicated. But Williams explained to him that he believed the movie was about a primal fear, and so the music needed to match that feeling; simple, but bruising and undeniable. “He played [those two notes],” Spielberg would say years later during an interview, “and it turned out to be just the perfect idea.” John Williams: the fucking king of kings.
2:38: This is Chrissie. She’s currently attending a beach party with a bunch of other people. She’s about to swim in the ocean nude as a way of flirting with a guy who has taken an interest in her. Unfortunately for Chrissie, what she does not know is that she’ll be bitten in half not too long after making her way into the water.
2:39: P.S. Chrissie’s death is one of the most traumatizing MOVIE OPENING DEATHS ever. It’s equally as traumatizing in the book version. Here’s how Benchley begins the moment:
At first, the woman thought she had snagged her leg on a rock or a piece of floating wood. There was no initial pain, only one violent tug on her right leg. She reached down to touch her foot, treading water with her left leg to keep her head up, feeling in the blackness with her left hand. She could not find her foot.
I felt like the floor fell out from under me the first time I read “She could not find her foot.” Great, great writing.
4:38: The way Chrissie gets thrashed across the screen… fucking hell, man. I talked in the Jurassic Park essay about the brilliance of Spielberg’s decision to not show a dinosaur in the opening kill scene of that movie. He learned that trick here. Everything just feels so much more violent and cataclysmic when you can’t see the attacker.
5:02: …Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Chrissie’s dead. She was on screen for less than three minutes and barely said any words but will never, ever, ever be forgotten. She’s gotta have one of the highest Character Efficiency Rating scores ever.
5:56: Roy Scheider is here. He plays Martin Brody, the new police chief of Amity Island, a small New England beach town. Scheider is perfect in this. I have precisely zero critical notes about his performance. He’s the exact right amount of cool, and the exact right amount of haunted, and the exact right amount of insecure.
7:09: One of the more interesting character traits of Chief Brody, who moved to Amity from New York City, is that he has a profound fear of the water. And that phobia might seem like it’d be something that would preclude a person from accepting a job as the chief of police for a town that’s a literal island. But it doesn’t stop Brody here, which I have to assume is owed entirely to the fact that the police cars in Amity are so fucking cool. Look at this thing:
♥️♥️♥️
7:10: (Chief Brody shares his real reason for taking the job later in the movie, when he and another guy are drunk out on a boat: He says, “I’m telling you, the crime rate in New York will kill you. There’s so many problems, you never feel like you’re accomplishing anything. … But in Amity, one man can make a difference.” And, I mean, if I were a citizen of Amity, I would honestly feel safer if he’d taken the job because the police cars were cool. Like, WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S TOO MUCH CRIME IN NEW YORK CITY? Bitch, fix it! That’s literally your job.)
9:38: Two things about this moment here where Chief Brody fills in the PROBABLE CAUSE OF DEATH section on the police report after Chrissie’s remains wash up on the shore:
Spielberg opting to have the cause of death typed out rather than having someone say it out aloud is such a great choice. It’s another example of the stylistic restraint he goes on to exemplify time and time again, both in this movie and throughout his career more broadly.
Chief Brody not knowing the difference between “coroner” and “corner” is a wonderful little character touch.
13:07: Murray Hamilton is here. He plays Larry Vaughn, the mayor of Amity. And his only concern in the movie is making sure the beaches stay open so the island can collect all its tourism dollars it grabs each summer. Every time someone gets eaten he’s just like, “Ah, well. Waddya gonna do? See y’all at the beach tomorrow!”
13:08: P.S. In the book version of Jaws, Amity Island is set off the coast of Long Island, and we find out the mafia is pressuring the mayor to keep the beaches open. In the movie, there’s (thankfully) no mafia. Instead, Mayor Vaughn runs his own real estate company, so presumably he’s nervous about a summer-long shutdown tanking his own business holdings. Or something like that. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is you should never trust any man ever who has a suit jacket with anchors embroidered onto it.
14:41: Oh, man. Here we go. The gnarliest death of the movie. Poor Alex Kitner. All he wanted to do was have a little fun on his raft out in the water, and instead what he gets is turned into a fucking human sushi roll…
17:21: It’s been over half a century, and I honestly still can’t believe this scene made it into the movie. Let’s do a full breakdown of this kill. Here are the five most important parts of one of the all-time most horrific movie deaths:
