Still the best....

Rating: 10/10 (10 October 2005)

I was 13 years old when I first saw this film,and remembering queueing outside the old Classic cinema in Stockton-On-Tees with my dad. After seeing it,I swear at the time it was the best film I have ever seen. I saw it again with my late mother (who kept hiding her eyes at the climax,and I kept saying "You're missing it") and I saw it again and again. It came on television and when we got a video recording machine,we taped it and kept and finally on 5 September 2001,I got the video as part of some gift tokens for my birthday. I remember that date with some infamy. I decided to go to Middlesbrough as it represented a better selection for my tokens. I got my video and went back to my car. GONE. STOLEN. Of course six days later,another date of infamy emerged. I had seen Deep Blue Sea,which for me was a reworking of Jaws,and while I'll admit the sharks looked better in DBS,it lacked the menace and terror of Spielberg's original masterpiece. Also whilst DBS had better sharks,when one of them got Samuel L Jackson,his image being eaten resembled an inflatable dummy and not the classic image of Robert Shaw going down the great gob. Jaws had style,it had great characters,it had humour and it had everyman representation,as if the whole town became a character. Maybe a reworking of Ibsen's Enemy of the People (but who was the enemy:the shark or the money grabbing authorities) and the final phase was of Three Men In A Boat. Memorable scenes:Chrissie screaming for her life,Polly the secretary being mundane about things,the Kintner boy,Quint's intro...there is too many. The climax though is still the best of its genre. Spielberg from thereon was unstoppable and has matured to make such classics as Schindler's List,Saving Private Ryan and the recent and excellent War of The Worlds,not forgetting the Indiana Jones' films. Schindler's List is quite rightly his masterpiece,but the excellent Duel became the template for Jaws and Jaws was the seminal classic for not only the career of Spielberg,but film making in general. Recently I got the DVD for my birthday (no car stolen this time) and for my dad,we always put the subtitles on,and I am amazed of what dialogue I had not known,thinking I knew it all. My favourite film now,after I have matured myself over the years,is David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia,a film that once inspired a one young Steven Spielberg to become a movie maker and who himself had a hand in the restoration. Mark S Bradshaw marks.bradshaw@ntlworld.com