I would have eaten the remains, Whos With Me? No?

Rating: 10/10 (10 May 2008)

Throughout Spielberg's career he has a seemingly easy time translating novel to film like Schindler's List and Jurassic Park. As a child when I first saw the film, Jaws I was immediately frightened by the unseen terror that pulls the human psychosis to the depths of the ocean, literally. I was highly hesitant because to a young child, an attractive skinny dipper suffering to the wrath of the giant unknown mouth was the most horrifying sequence in film history at the time.
One of the many joys of this film is the cast. Roy Scheider is perfect as the cop who first realises that chewed torsos washing up on the local beach may be a good reason to keep people out of the water. The film is very reminiscent of Moby Dick with the boat and the Shark/Whale and to conquer this wild beast. The sound was good with many layers adding this effect as if it was in reality and that we were there. The shot with the trombone shot was excellent and is the best I've seen. The dialogue was funny like in many of Spielberg's films. It is also probably the "Quintessential Spielberg Film.". It was so successful that it spawned 3 other sequels the first sequel was good but not as good as Jaws and the other two, well...... The film is highly influential with the storyline, humour, narrative structure and the technical side of things like the camera techniques and the design of the shark. Like the design of Alien in Alien this is tremendously good. I liked the POV shots of the shark. I also liked the sound when the boy was being killed as the camera was bopping up and down in the water which gave it a natural effect. People always talk about how fake the Shark looks. I think it looks better as today it would definitely be done by CGI and would look fake. This film is one of my favourites, used to like it but now being re-introduced its one of my favourites.
I think that the reason why the film is still largely popular is because of its music, visuals, narrative, actors, dialogue and camera techniques. The music is obviously a strong standing point in cinema history for its irregular tone and notes in the piece. The low pitch gives a feeling of calmness but with the motion being quick giving a strange sensation that everything going to be OK but at the same time a certain element of horror. The visuals are great the settings, the way the locations look, making the shots look wonderful. I think that the idea of a shark attacking a small community effected the reason why as no ones ever seen this before, although they must of seen a murderer rampaging a bunch of tarty teenagers in a small community. This influenced a whole bunch of other not so great shark films like the most impressive film since Jaws2 which is Deep Blue Sea with some nods to the sequel to Jaws. The trombone shot is a major technique that has been used since Hitchcock's Vertigo with the sense of unreality or to suggest that a character is going into realisation. The technique is used a lot but never as well done as this, Vertigo and the Goodfellas. The dialogue is very much I feel in the genre of Comedy trying to make the horror disappear quite quickly and to reassure the audience. My favourite line is 'we're gonna need a bigger boat.' That's kind of reassuring the audience well actually isn't seeing that the shark is bigger than we expected.
I definitely feel that the opening sequence is a great way to start a film off. The opening sequences have few parallel to today's cinema. Like the shower scene in Psycho they will haunt a whole nation. A lot of scene I liked and is hard to some up another scene.
Spielberg builds up tension by slowly revealing the shark to audience with a few glimpses of the shark when it attacks but never actually seeing the shark up close. I think that the less we saw of it the more realistic the shark become and frightened audience with the idea of what you can't see can't hurt you well may be more like what you can't see can hurt you and probably kill you and the strains of John William's unforgettable score which was used as the mechanical shark that was used kept sinking but I feel that this made the film better and made it memorable.
This is not your average fish story.