A helluva fish

Rating: 10/10 (12 July 2003)

Is this the ultimate popcorn thriller or what? It's maybe the greatest Hitchcock film Hitchcock didn't direct, mixing elements of "Psycho" and "The Birds" and even a little "Vertigo" when the camera closes on Sheriff Brodie as the Kitner boy explodes in a smorgasbord of red foam and flailing limbs.
It's not Hitchcock who directed this film, but some other guy who has gone on to do some other stuff. It's probably true that other stuff has sometimes been deeper ("Close Encounters"), more exciting ("Raiders of the Lost Ark"), more gripping ("Saving Private Ryan"), or more fluid in mixing humor and horror (the first "Jurassic Park"). But "Jaws" was the most perfect movie Steven Spielberg ever made, as perfect and efficient an entertainment vehicle as Bruce was an eating machine.
When this movie first came out, I wanted nothing to do with it. I was all of nine, and liked swimming on the beach. I saw the effect this movie had on kids who didn't want to swim out with me at the beach anymore. It wasn't until many years later that I saw the movie, and I was blown away. Not so much by the nasty shark attacks, though there are some shocking moments in this movie. I was shocked rather by the excellent acting, the absorbing plot, the whole story, even the spectacle of life in New England in the 1970s with all the bad bathing suits, ridiculous hair, and beach music like "You're Having My Baby" and "I Honestly Love You." Oh, yeah, okay, those shark attacks are pretty special, too.
There's some very good things in this movie, some great things, and then there's Robert Shaw, who's beyond everything. He manages to be both the dramatic heavy and comic relief, the glue behind the male bonding that centers the final third of the film. If Shaw wasn't so good, the whole finale would seem illogical (Why did he smash that radio? Why is he gunning that motor when the boat is clearly failing?) As his WWII story makes clear, he's wrestling with major league survivor's guilt, not to mention a desire to go mano-a-mano with the monster of his nightmares. He almost wills himself into the shark's maw with nothing but a machete in his hands.
What a master of detail Spielberg is. He's like John Ford, so bored in on the humanity of every character, big and small, as epic in his scope, protean in his range, and even faster with his pacing. Every time I watch this movie, and I do so a lot, usually in the summer, I pick up on something else I really like. Maybe it's the vignettes of small-town coastal life, the anatomy lesson of a rickety vessel in distress, Mrs. Brodie's subtle goading of her husband, or Polly the slope-shouldered old lady and Brodie's receptionist who thinks a community crisis is when the nine-year-olds are "karating" the picket fences. John Williams' score is rousing and brilliant, not just during the shark attacks but the moments in between when he references sea chanties and the like. Killer cinematography, too. Did waters ever look so blue, or skies so brightly azure, as they do during the voyage of the Orca? Murray Hamilton's mayor is a wonderful minor character, right up to the moment he suddenly realizes the waters around him are too deep and bloody to negotiate any more. ("My children were in that water, too.")
But it always comes back to Shaw and Quint. Great lines, great moments, great shots, quiet ones of him standing in the pulpit with his rifle, noisy ones of him laughing with Hooper and Brodie, even goofy ones of him using the chalkboard at Town Hall to make a point. Even Richard Dreyfus's nasal, cutsey whining becomes effective counterpoint when set against the barnacly bluster of Capt. Quint. Shame Shaw didn't survive the decade; he and Peter Sellers were the two most missed actors in the 1980s.
This is as much a movie for the summer as "It's A Wonderful Life" is for Christmas. Even if you live in Nebraska, do yourself a favor one evening, pretend the cornfields outside are the raging Atlantic, and pop "Jaws" into your video machine. Forget Moby Dick. There's no better fish story on the planet.