"This is not the time or place to perform some kind of a half-assed autopsy on a fish."

Rating: 8/10 (3 December 2000)

WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS
But it's always a good time to dissect Jaws, one of the most iconographic  if not necessarily classic  films of the last three decades.
I'm not normally a Spielberg fan, finding him often bland and sentimental. So it's a pleasant discovery to find a director who, with Jaws, was at the top of his game.
Oh, it's all hollow, of course. No real message or depth, just a multiplex-pleasing piscine horror movie, yet the way each and every single shot is lovingly put together is truly commendable. There's neat touches, like Schieder's face zooming into close up while the background stays the same distance. Admittedly, he's ripping off Hitchcock left, right and centre, but he's doing it in such a caring way it doesn't really seem to matter. Other images stand out, such as the head in the boat, or the dead swimmer's buried hand crawling with crabs. (The crustaceans, not the STD). There are clever moments, like Roy looking through research pictures on sharks. Not only does this give out relatively discrete exposition, but also it gets in our minds the image of a real shark, a sense of foreboding that would cover over any misgivings when the actual rubber version finally appears. And with John Williams' supremely memorable "der-der, der-der" incidental theme, Spielberg has a Psycho-rivalling sting to deliver home the shocks.
A man coming out of his hut with the sign "Harbor Master Frank Silva" is a little obvious in imparting information, but Dreyfuss' autopsy is another genius touch. In order to keep the film available to the widest possible audience, the gore is toned down. So what Dreyfuss' description does is to suggest it, which is scarier anyway. In fact, the first sighting of the shark isn't till nearly an hour into the movie, during which time Spielberg has skilfully borrowed and honed shots from classic cinema to blend into the picture. Characters walk too near to the camera, or in front of it, obscuring the view, while waves splash up it  all giving a subliminal illusion of reality.
Yet it has to be said that the second half, with it's slightly camp incidental music, and ponderous male bonding dissipates the tension somewhat. It's as if Spielberg realised he was building up to something really special and lost his nerve. Shots of the shark itself actually amount to less than ten minutes of the film's duration, many of which are underwater shots of the real thing. Where the action (i.e. when he's eating the actors) dictates the fake prop must be used the movie is less effective. The rubber shark now looks, frankly, slightly ridiculous. It's ironic that while the shark is the thing on which the movie is based, whenever it appears it tears at the credibility of the piece. While the shark's indestructibility and extreme powers of devastation  "smile, you sonovabitch!"  is an air of the feint silliness that would be symptomatic of the vastly inferior sequels...