" jaws " is a rare film that grabs your attention before it shows you a single image on screen .
the movie opens with blackness , and only distant , alien - like underwater sounds .
then it comes , the first ominous bars of composer john williams ' now infamous score .
dah - dum .
from there , director steven spielberg wastes no time , taking us into the water on a midnight swim with a beautiful girl that turns deadly .
right away he lets us know how vulnerable we all are floating in the ocean , and once " jaws " has attacked , it never relinquishes its grip .
perhaps what is most outstanding about " jaws " is how spielberg builds the movie .
he works it like a theatrical production , with a first act and a second act .
unlike so many modern filmmakers , he has a great deal of restraint , and refuses to show us the shark until the middle of the second act .
until then , he merely suggests its presence with creepy , subjective underwater shots and williams ' music .
he 's building the tension bit by bit , so when it comes time for the climax , the shark 's arrival is truly terrifying .
he does n't let us get bored with the imagery .
the first act opens with police chief martin brody ( roy scheider ) , a new york cop who has taken an easy , peaceful job running the police station on amity island , a fictitious new england resort town where there has n't been a murder or a gun fired in 25 years .
the island is shaken up by several vicious great white shark attacks right before the fourth of july , and the mayor , larry vaughn ( murray hamilton ) , does n't want to shut down the beaches because the island is reliant on summer tourist money .
brody is joined by matt hooper ( richard dreyfuss ) , a young , ambitious shark expert from the marine institute .
hooper is as fascinated by the shark as he is determined to help brody stop it -- his knowledge about the exact workings of the shark ( " it 's a perfect engine , an eating machine " ) make it that much more terrifying .
when vaughn finally relents , hooper and brody join a crusty old shark killer named quint ( robert shaw ) on his decrepit boat , the orca , to search for the shark .
the entire second act takes place on the orca as the three men hunt the shark , and inevitably , are hunted by it .
" jaws " is a thriller with a keen sense of humor and an incredible sense of pacing , tension , and horror .
it is like ten movies all rolled into one , and it 's no wonder
it took america by storm in the summer of 1975 , taking in enough money to crown it the box office champ of all time ( until it was unceremoniously dethroned in 1977 by " star wars " ) .
even today , fascination with this film is on par with hitchcock 's " psycho , " and it never seems to age .
although grand new technology exists that makes the technical sequences , including several mechanical sharks , obsolete , none of it could improve the film because it only would lead to overkill .
the technical limitations faced by spielberg in 1975 may have actually produced a better film because it forced him to rely on traditional cinematic elements like pacing , characterization , sharp editing , and creative photography , instead of simply dousing the audience with digital shark effects .
scheider , dreyfuss , and shaw were known actors at the time " jaws " was made , but none of them had the draw of a robert redford or paul newman .
nevertheless , this film guaranteed them all successful careers because each gave an outstanding performance and refused to be overshadowed by the shark .
scheider hits just the right notes as a sympathetic husband and father caught in the political quagmire of doing what 's right and going against the entire town .
"
it 's your first summer here , you know , " mayor vaughn warns him .
dreyfuss , who had previously been seen in " american graffiti " ( 1973 ) and " the apprenticeship of duddy kravitz " ( 1974 ) gives a surprisingly mature , complex performance for someone who had literally only played kids and teenagers .
however , most outstanding is the gnarled performance by robert shaw as the movie 's captain ahab , a performance sorely overlooked by the academy awards .
bordering of parody , shaw plays quint as a grizzled old loner whose machismo borders on masochism .
he 's slightly deranged , and shaw 's performance is almost a caricature .
however , there is one scene late in the film , when he and brody and hooper are below deck on the orca comparing scars .
quint is drawn into telling the story of his experiences aboard the u . s .
s .
indianapolis , a navy ship in world war ii that was sunk by the japanese .
his tale of floating in the water for more than a week with over 1 , 000 other men while swarms of sharks slowly devoured them them is actually more hair - raising than anything spielberg put on screen .
shaw delivers the story in one long take , and it is the best acting in the film .
of course , we ca n't leave out the shark itself ; with its black eyes , endless rows of teeth , and insatiable urge to eat , it is basically the epitome of all mankind 's fears about what is unknown and threatening in nature .
a shark is such a perfect nemesis it is real -- having survived sinch the dinosaurs , great whites do exist , they can be as large as the shark in " jaws , " and they are a threat .
every one of spielberg 's subjective underwater shots makes us feel queasy because lets us see how we look to the shark : a bunch of writihing , dangling , completely unprotected legs just ready to be chomped into .
the shark in " jaws " was actually a combination of actual footage and five different mechanical sharks ( all nicknamed " bruce " by the crew ) built to be shot from different angles .
many have forgotten , but " jaws " was a sort of precursor to " waterworld " ( 1995 ) , a movie 's who soggy production and cost overruns had universal studios worried about a bomb .
but , as we can see now , spielberg overcame all the obstacles , and delivered one of the finest primal scare - thrillers ever to come out of hollywood .
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