Jaws (1975)

Spielberg has always been at his best when dealing with monsters, be they the killer truck of Duel (1972), the rampaging dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) or the inhuman camp commandants of Empire of the Sun (1987) and Schindler's List (1993). His most potent symbol of the Monster came in Jaws, a primal, Jungian archetype that has tapped a fearsome vein in the minds of audience since its release.

The plot is the very essence of simplicity; as the Long Island coastal resort of Amity prepares for the 4th July celebrations, a gigantic Great White shark patrols the shorelines, snatching victims at random and creating panic wherever it goes. This was the basic premise of Benchley's rather pompous and overblown bestseller, stripped to its bare mechanics by Benchley and Gottlieb for this superior screen version.

The opening is classic Spielberg; a young woman, Chrissie, (Susan Backlinie) goes for a nude midnight swim and is attacked by something unseen but clearly monstrous lurking beneath the waves. Spielberg pitches us straight into the action, lowering his cameras into the sea itself, cannily placing his audience in the alien environment with the doomed girl. The shock delivered by this stunning opening sequence sets the tone for what is to come, establishing the perfect note of primal terror that Spielberg milks throughout the film. The ocean is an alien place, full of unseen, unknown dangers and by placing us in the position of vulnerability shared by the hapless Chrissie effortlessly draws us into the narrative. The sea figures in just about every scene throughout the film, sometimes only in the background, and the opening sequence constructs it as a symbol of something terrifying and utterly beyond our comprehension.

The plot follows the progress of harrassed small town cop Chief Martin Brody (a winning performance from Roy Scheider) as he deals with the unfolding menace. The narrative is neatly divided into three distinct sections, adhering to the classic three act structure that underpins all the most effective drama. In the early stages, Brody is as much in the dark as the audience. Pre-release publicity has primed us to expect the worst, but Spielberg refuses to show us the shark (affectionately named Bruce by the crew) until well into the film. Initially, its presence is signalled only by John Williams' brooding score, some disturbing POV shots and the occassional shadow, fin or amorphous shape in the briny.

The narrative moves up a gear when the menace is identified - petty town officials, led by the innefectual mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton, man of a thousand tacky blazers!) fight Brody's decision to close the beaches, fearing that the tourist trade will dry up, oblivious to the very real problem cruising their beaches: "That doesn't mean we have to serve them up as smorgasbord" quips an outraged Brody. These beaurocractic shenanigans took up a sizeable part of Benchley's novel but here is pared to a minimum. Speilberg wisely keeps attention fixed on the real horror, the shark, and reduces the petty machinations of the mayor and his cronies to a mere sub-plot.

One of the film's highlights is Brody's agonising vigil on the beach, nervously scanning the shoreline for signs of the monster as bathers happily and ignorantly cavort in the surf. Spielberg's mastery of the conventions of the suspense cinema are painfully evident as practical jokes, false alarms and ominous shadows have Brody - and us - on the edge of our seats. When the inevitable attack does finally come, claiming the life of a little boy and brilliantly signalled by subtle cutaways of a youth searching for his missing dog, it almost comes as a relief. It is here that Spielberg stages the oft-discussed dolly-zoom shot, a disorienting effect used by Hitchcock in Vertigo (1958) and employed here to top an already unbearably tense sequence. Later, he mixes panic, humour and terror to dizzying effect in the 4th of July sequence.

The third section of the narrative - the longest and the best - uses Benchley's novel only for is basic plot mechanics, taking for its main inspiration Melville - it's no coincidence that Captain Ahab's nemesis was a white whale. Brody is joined by an excitable young marine biologist, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss at his most likeable) and Quint (Robert Shaw), a bluff old cove adept at shark hunting, in a quest to track down and destroy the beast - ominously, their departure from the docks is framed in one of the many shark's jaws that decorates Quint's workshop.

These three men in their boat spend much of the final sections of the film pursuing the beast in the open sea, fighting a running battle of wits with a creature that has long since ceased to be a simple shark - as the finale approaches, the monster assumes mythic proportions, becoming a potent symbol of Man's helplessness in the face of violent nature. Faced with a primal terror from the depths (of our collective unconscious, as much as of the ocean), we are reduced to light snacks and hors d'euvres for a phenomenal killing machine. Little wonder that the film performed so well at the box office and kept beach bums out of the sea for most of the summer of '75.

Technically, Jaws is almost flawless. The construction of the narrative is text book stuff, leading us inexorably into the powerful climax wherein Brody must face his own personal terror of the sea to confront the creature on its own turf - a much more effective closure than Benchley's original, wherein the shark simply dies of exhaustion. Spielberg's translation of the slim-line script into a vehicle of unrelenting tension has rarely been equalled, even by Spielberg himself. Aided immeasurably by the excellent score from Williams (one minute soaring and joyous, the next dark and brooding, it remains one of the best film soundtracks ever), razor sharp editing and inventive camerawork, Spielberg constructs a suspense machine every bit as ruthless and efficient as the shark itself. The now legendary 'head' scene is the most perfectly crafted shock sequence that mainstream Hollywood has ever produced - no matter how many times you see it, it still scares the hell out of you.

Characterisation is kept to the bare minimum, the script offering us only the bare bones of the main characters. The only time we ever get to see something of the people lurking behind the three leads is during the lengthy nocturnal drinking session aboard the boat where we see the three aspects of the crew that are alternately complementary and antagonistic. Hooper is the enthusiastic academic, wealthy and ambitious; Brody is the level headed family man, a pragmatist whose caution helps to balance the well-meaning recklessness of Hooper; and Quint is the irrascible old sea dog, moved almost to tears by his recollections of the USS Indianapolis disaster, and driven by a burning obsession to meet his doom in the jaws of the shark.

The antagonist in Jaws was always intended to be something more than a simple 'monster'. It is a metaphor, a symbol of everything that we find unfathomable and repellent in our civilised world. It represents nature at its most destructive and primitive - Kim Newman, writing in Nightmare Movies, noted that "Amity may be a bustling holiday paradise, but cross the beach and you're back in the paleolithic." When the shark swims into The Pond, the supposedly safe lagoon area, savage, primal nature invades our civilised sanctuary - there can be no escape, no hiding place. When it begins to circle the Orca, one gets the unnerving impression that it is the one doing the hunting.

Perhaps the ultimate moment of primal terror comes when Hooper gets in his anti-shark cage and prepares to face off the creature in its own domain. The immensity of the ocean is hinted at as the shark vanishes from sight in the gloom, only to return from the dark like a monstrous avenging angel to suddenly menace our man. Once again, Mankind attempts to confront the primal with his technological toys, only to be put back in his place and shown the futility of his ways.

The extended climax surely stands as Spielberg's finest hour or so. Sudden shifts in perspective are milked for all they're worth - the Orca, Quint's fishing boat manned by the trio of disparate characters was already claustrophobic and cramped, but when a glorious aerial shot reveals the massive shark cruising nonchalantly beneath it, we are made privvy to the true vulnerability of the crew: "You're going to need a bigger boat" opines Brody.

One could go on for ever about Jaws, finding in it new nuances and subtleties on every viewing. But to overanalyse it would be futile for, as has been pointed out so many times here, it is the film's primal feel that makes it so enthralling. The film was a massive success for Spielberg, his first such blockbuster, paving the way for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) which, despite its apparent dissimilarity, shares some of the concerns of Jaws. Both films present Mankind (represented in both cases by Dreyfuss) with an inscrutible and potentially destructive force beyond its control - though the later film adopts a more positive, uplifting view of the meeting, almost a mirror image in fact of Jaws.

Jaws was followed by a trio of increasingly worthless sequels and many a lookalike (Piranha (1978), Alligator (1980), Tentacoli (1977) et al), none of which managed to equal Spielberg's movie for sheer technical excellence and enjoyment.
KEVIN LYONS