About Jaws and Saving Private Ryan

Rating: 10/10 (23 December 2001)

I'm not going to write a review of Jaws because it would be almost impossible to write more good things about this movie as all my colleagues and other film buffs have done; I'm just want to give my point of view about the Spielberg's film, comparating Jaws and Saving Private Ryan. I'll give you some points to think about it:

These two films starts with a very impressive and scaring scene (Chrissie's death and the Omaha Beach sequence)

They've got two main monologues, which make you move; the Indianapolis story and the Captain Miller's monologue about his life as High School Teacher.

Spielberg prefers to show the impressive things using his characters, I mean, when Hendricks found Chrissie's hand, we see his face full of horror before watching the hand; in the same way, Captain Miller's slow motion sequences shows his point of view of the war horror.

In Jaws, the starrings prepare a cage to hunt the shark; it's a unvoiced scene, you just hear the great William's music; in Saving Private Ryan, when the characters are in Rammel, they prepare traps for the Germans; Spielberg doesn't use any dialogue in that scene, just William's music. If you pay attention, you'll find these two scenes very similar not only as a film but as a music film.

Spielberg uses a lot of graphical violence, something he hasn't used since Jaws - despite Schindler's List, that I don't find as graphical as Jaws or Saving Private Ryan.