Jaws (shark film)

[madhair60]

Just watched Jaws first time yesterday.

Was good.

Then I played the NES Jaws game - less good.

Jaws.

[Kelvin]

Jaws might be the best film ever made. Even better than Masters of The Universe.

[madhair60]

Jaws might be the best film ever made. Even better than Masters of The Universe.

After showing me Jaws, my mate went "right - next up, Masters of The Universe".

One for the coincidences thread.

[SteveDave]

I bluddy love Jaws (Shark Film).

If only it had a downer ending it'd be the best film ever made.

[Shit Good Nose]

Jesus Jeff Christ - HOW have you managed to go 41 years without seeing Jaws (shark film)?!?!?!?!


Whilst it's not my favourite film, I firmly believe it is the most perfect film ever made.


Once you've watched Masters of the Universe, watch Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (shark film).  Third best film ever made.

[Bad Ambassador]

I watched Jaws III last week. The Brody sons age suddenly and Manimal's in it.

[shiftwork2]

You know the bit when Robert Shaw gets bit while on the sinking boat?[nb]refusing to spoiler that[/nb]  Well my mate Steve had the extended version on VHS and in that Shaw gets cut in half and all his guts and innards slide out onto the deck.  It was boss.

[madhair60]

shark that

shark there

careful

[Shit Good Nose]

I watched Jaws III last week. The Brody sons age suddenly and Manimal's in it.

And poor old Shelby Overman...

Someone should write a song about him.  It would obviously be called The Ballad of Shelby Overman (Lament).

[Shit Good Nose]

careful

with that shark, Eugene.

[Blumf]

I don't like the Jaws film, there are not enough spaceships in it.

[madhair60]

I cannot stop thinking about this film. It does so much with so little. What a masterpiece.

[Mini]

I love Jaws (shark film). "You're gonna need a smaller shark!" Great stuff.

[Steven]

shark that

shark there

careful

Jaws scene analysis: High-Tension On The Beach.

Terror Tansmission: Jaws

Opie & Anthony: Talkin' Jaws

[Captain Z]

I like Jaws (shark film) but not as much as Free Willy (whale film).

[Replies From View]

I always thought they should name the sequels 'Fins', 'Gills' and things like that.  Describe a shark's body more gradually.

Come to think of it 'Jaws' isn't even fish-specific, let alone shark-specific.

[Bad Ambassador]

If you watch it backwards its called SWAJ.

[AsparagusTrevor]

One of my favourite hobbies is going around asking people what they think the scariest bit of Jaws (shark film) is, then I shout "THE HEAD WASN'T FUCKING SEVERED" into their faces, making sure I spray plenty of gob. Even if they don't mention anything about a severed head, or Jaws or shark films.

[Bazooka]

What makes it one of the best films created is the catchphrases like when the policeman shoots the Jaws at the end: "bloody pain in my neck, smile shit fish!" kaplow.

[Beagle 2]

I absolutely love Jaws, the only thing I'd say is I never understood what having a shark in it brought to the party.

[Steven]

I only like it for the musical numbers.

[Serge]

I love it up until the bit where they get on the boat. Then it's Robert Shaw overacting like buggery, Scheider whining for an hour and only Dreyfuss actually acting like a character I give a toss about. Not that that's stopped me watching it about 14 times in my life. On my last rewatch, my favourite scene was the one with the two guys on the wooden pier using a sunday roast as bait and having half of the pier pulled away from under them - the key moment being where the broken piece of pier which indicates where the shark is turns around and starts coming back for the one who fell in. The first half of the film is full of stuff like this, and all the more thrilling for not showing many, if any, shark shots.

[spock rogers]

Mr Spielberg blew it big time with this shark film when he decided not to end it with a title card that simply said 'fin'. What a boob. 0/10.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I love it up until the bit where they get on the boat. Then it's Robert Shaw overacting like buggery, Scheider whining for an hour and only Dreyfuss actually acting like a character I give a toss about. Not that that's stopped me watching it about 14 times in my life. On my last rewatch, my favourite scene was the one with the two guys on the wooden pier using a sunday roast as bait and having half of the pier pulled away from under them - the key moment being where the broken piece of pier which indicates where the shark is turns around and starts coming back for the one who fell in. The first half of the film is full of stuff like this, and all the more thrilling for not showing many, if any, shark shots.

Shaw's performance isn't really that OTT, is it? He's playing an obsessive shark-hunter who hides his deep-seated trauma behind a tough-guy carapace of self-mythologising bullshit.

I think his facial expressions and line delivery when he's confronted with the sheer scale of the shark are actually quite subtle, and his delivery of the famed Indianapolis speech is faultless.

What's more, he gurgles blood and screams in agony with more aplomb than arguably any film actor in history.

I agree that the scene on the pier is a stunning piece of film-making. When Spielberg cuts from the broken piece of pier turning around,  to the guy desperately trying to clamber from the sea, the sense of tension and terror is excruciating.

Other great moments include:

Brody, lost in a book about shark attacks, being violently startled by his wife gently putting her hands on his shoulders. Then, after he tells her that most shark victims are killed in just a few feet of water, she screams at her own kids to stop playing in a nearby boat.

Hooper sarcastically crushing his plastic cup when Quint crushes his beer can.

Hooper saying "You might want to let that breathe for a min... okay", as a drunk and despondent Brody pours half a bottle of red into his glass.

After the 4th July attacks, the Mayor of Amity desperately muttering to himself about a hopeless, self-serving contingency plan.

"That's some bad hat, Harry."

The mother of the dead Kintner boy slapping Brody in the face (an actual local, she really did slap Scheider, hence why the scene has such power).

The weirdly camp, fat fisherman who says "A whaaaaat?!" when Hooper announces that they've caught the wrong shark.

Hooper's hysterical laughter when he realises that Amity's local government have no intention of closing the beaches.

Actually, Richard Dreyfuss is amazing in Jaws (shark film), isn't he? The rich expert from the know-it-all university of marine biology would usually be the smug antagonist in films of this type, but Hooper is thoroughly likeable and a voice of reason throughout.

It's Quint, who probably fancies himself as a true American folk hero, who fucks everything up.

For all the talk of Jaws (shark film) bringing an end to the New Hollywood era with its summer block-busting success - and it certainly, if inadvertently, had a major part to play in that shift - it definitely conforms to the '70s vogue for neurotic, non-macho heroes rising up against a corrupt establishment.

The obvious difference between Jaws (shark film) and other, more paranoid films of the era, is that the little man actually triumphs against the forces of evil in the end. But there's no shame in that, Jaws (shark film) is, after all, a traditional monster movie. It's a classic hero's journey tale, and an exemplary piece of popular entertainment.

But there's no mistaking the fact that the nerdy, wine-drinking blokes with glasses are the ones you can trust in the film. The conservative old-guard, with their beer, sexism and anchor-printed sports-jackets are the real villains.

Apart from that bastard shark, of course. With his suit and tie.

[Steven]

Also I believe in Benchley's book (which I have not read) Hooper was having an affair with Brody's wife, also there's a Mafioso backstory to keeping the beaches open, with stupid Anchor-suit Mayor Vaughan imbroigled in which was kept out of the film probably for the better.

That said, the notion that Speilberg and co were making a 'monster movie' that died a death since 'Bruce the Shark' didn't actually work and so had to create a more character based story on-the-fly sounds so much more romantic I'm not even sure is actually true, though great if it's true as his previous film Duel is very much that. They certainly kept re-writing scene to scene on the fly, even drafting in John Milius to write Shaw's iconic Indionaplois speech, which Shaw judiciously edited down from several pages into what we see onscreen, the most perfect moment of the movie I feel to give his character purpose. Shaw re-shot that scene as he was far too pissed to deliver it effectively the first time and the crew wrapped despondently for a day and he came back the next practicing it more perefectly, and I feel, his delivery, whether mis-remembered or not adds gravitas.. "He's got.. (`black' he wants to say but stifles it) lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes.."

Again, went over that wank in a previous thread.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Exactly, Steven. The romantic myth that Jaws became a masterpiece because they had to film and write around the malfunctioning shark is very persuasive - and probably quite true, up to a point - but Duel had already shown that Spielberg would rather build suspense by hinting at terror, rather than showing it outright.

The faulty shark narrative suggests that Spielberg had to improvise around a gratuitous plan to show the great beast chomping on victims from the start. There's nothing in his work, before or since, to suggest that he would ever be so unsubtle.

The aforementioned scene of the pier "attacking" the fishermen wasn't a fluke. A film-maker of Spielberg's calibre had that sort of thing mapped out from the start.

[Steven]

Exactly, Steven. The romantic myth that Jaws became a masterpiece because they had to film and write around the malfunctioning shark is very persuasive - and probably quite true, up to a point - but Duel had already shown that Spielberg would rather build suspense by hinting at terror, rather than showing it outright.

Yes, analysing the cuts and emotional motives of the scenes very much seems like Spielberg had his eye very much on the ball, as evidenced in the breakdown previously posted High-Tension On The Beach but I don't think Spielberg is a 'dialogue' guy, he very much works in visuals and emotional impetus thereof, so I can see how the film could have been very much more an 'implied' antagonist as with Something Evil or Duel and the non-working of the shark could have turned out to him focusing on the characters very much more and heavily improvised dialogue to fill out the film.

In the aforementioned breakdown there's also the notion Spielberg was very much a student of Hitchcock and and died to meet him which Hitchcock denied, decrying him as the bloke who did the 'fish movie', which is sad if it is indeed fact.

[Cerys]

Also I believe in Benchley's book (which I have not read) Hooper was having an affair with Brody's wife

A brief fling, yes.  He

Spoiler alert

dies later.  Shark food

[close]

.

[Kelvin]

One of the other things that sets Jaws (shark film) aside from later blockbusters, is the sound mix, which blends multiple layers together to create a more naturalistic sound. It's particularly effective during the beach scenes, when everyone's talking, moving, splashing, and heightens the sense that Brody has no control over the situation.

Obviously many film makers used that technique to great success during the 70's, but for obvious reasons, Jaws (shark film) is one of the only blockbusters to do so. It's actually one of my favourite things about the film, and particularly effective paired with the (mostly) low-key, naturalistic performances.     

[Replies From View]

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