Classic film, Spielberg's first hit and arguably Spielberg's best

Rating: Null/10 (31 October 2006)

The fearsome cartoon shark, Bruce, from Finding Nemo wouldn't have exited without Jaws. So many people's fear of the ocean, and particularly shark infested waters near otter and seals (such as up and down the California coast), wouldn't be what it still is (save for the gotta-cowabunga surfer-dudes), thirty years later, if not for this blockbuster summer hit that was Spielberg's breakthrough film.
The 26 foot great white is introduced slowly, as a blur killing the little boy, more as bird's eye under the water killing the guy in the 'pond', but fully at the stern of the Orca, at last, and which then proceeds to attack the boat and its crew as if this fish were the equal of Rommel writing on tank tactics, and were as unstoppable as any terminator juggernaut - four barrels!, says Shaw's Quint, in disbelief. The barrels represent the shark, of course, when they pop to the surface (a sort of black humor).
Schieder as the chief is very believable. Spielberg said he looked to cast an elderly Sterling Hayden, the nutty general from Kubrick's, Dr. Strangelove. But Hayden had other plans. Schieder is good. Dreyfuss is the same, for a guy whose characters veer into the annoying. He gets excited, and sometimes doesn't know what to say to bullies. But he's brave, at the last, and shows that he is paying attention. And Shaw's Quint does the same. Sure, he has the bluster of one who just doesn't like or trust people, as with the classic nails-on-the-blackboard scene where he negotiates his price of ten thousand, which eventually they pay. But when Dreyfuss tells Schieder to watch it, on the Orca, or else tip over some compressed air tanks (to introduce the essential plot resolution, later), after sort of dismissing Dreyfuss, Shaw in more hushed tones tells Schieder's character to watch it, as well - ask if you don't know what you're doing. So he's paying attention. But the character flaw of Quint, suggested by his general demeanor and craziness, is that he copes poorly under stress. He just flakes out. He becomes dangerously unglued. One could only imagine his difficulty in the water after the sinking of the Indy in WWII, which his character in this story was said to suffer.
As for the script, it seems much was opportunistic. Spielberg was up against it. Things weren't going well, it seemed. He thought they might stop production, and that would be it - and his career it might have turned out. But as others have pointed out, and I think Spielberg's friend and close collaborator, George Lucas, should take note, the success of the film was due not merely to the outstanding and appropriate score, but to what you didn't see on screen. It succeeded not because of the hard fought effort to get the effects to work, but because for the longest time, they didn't, forcing the filmmakers to improvise. What you got, instead, was an almost clean, theatrical encouragement to imagination - film-making as substitute for radio serials. Crissy, the opening victim, doesn't even seem to bleed. Something is happening to her, but there are no bloodpacks in the mouth, as later with Quint, when you've already seen the shark. She just, literally, gets jerked back and forth and is pulled under. It's much the same for the mannequin, the remains of the fisherman found in the dead of night as Dreyfuss confesses that he's rich and bought that boat/yacht, himself. The dead head is obviously a prop. But the reaction shot, the pacing, and importantly that Spielberg has your suspension of disbelief at that point, might make it work. At lot is left to the imagination for you to ignore that it's obviously a prop, a dummy.
Looking on the shark, now, in 2006, it's difficult not to see that it's obviously a mechanical prop. But in 1975, if you'd said to most people, they're building a large mechanical shark, people might have said - why? Great whites were known to those who would know. Those around Martha's Vineyard knew, of course - and that it didn't work, most of the time. But I think to most, this was the introduction of a creature they didn't know existed. So caught up in the film's suspense, the pacing, the direction, I think it was easily possible not to see this as a mechanical thing, but literally by imagination to overlook the obvious and make it seem what it was supposed to be - a live, gigantic, smart as an elephant, shark. But again, fortunately for the filmmakers, the fake shark was broken much of the time. And some of the key underwater footage was of real great whites, sometimes attacking a small model of the shark cage, scaled down. And Spielberg even shot a few brief shots of 'Dreyfuss' in the cage at the very last in someone's swimming pool.
There are a couple of key scenes. The set up for the shark eating the guy in the dingy, in the 'pond', apparently goes to some theme of the novel of the greedy businessmen who would overlook their civic duty and responsibility for the sake of not shutting down business on the big holiday. And then the 'shark fin' attacks, the frightened adults paw over the kids floating in their way, and trample the oldsters who can't get out of their way.
Another is the first view of the shark, showing that it is as big as the boat. That's the key scene because Quint jumps into attack mode, rather than abide the advice that they should retire from the scene - they need a bigger boat. This isn't a shark - it's Moby Dick.
And the last, obviously, was the one set up by the air tanks falling. Jaws bites one, holds it in its mouth, and policeman Scheider gets off a lucky shot. Otherwise, the movie ends as it should have ended.