Jaws (1975)
This is the movie I blame entirely for my overwhelming fear of very deep water. This film is, of course, what made Steven Spielberg's career. It's very difficult to say anything about this picture that has not been said before, ad nauseum. It is simply the best representation of the water as an instrument of fear. Using a tool that worked for him well for him before, Spielberg rarely showed the shark, causing us to be afraid of the murky H20 itself, much as he had done with the truck driver and his truck in Duel. Without showing the driver, the truck became the monster of that movie. When 'Bruce,' the mechanical shark does in fact show up, he's quite impressive, but one gets the feeling that too much of him would have been quite a bore. Rather, let the results of the attack, and John William's ominous score do the frightening.
The three leads are fine. Scheider is a particular favorite of mine, and he does very well with his role as the sheriff who's trying to protect the people, but is bogged down by politics. Richard Dreyfuss does know-it-all rich boy very well. He has an excellent concept of what he's doing, but sometimes rubs the wrong way with the people he's supposed to be helping or assisting. The best of the three, though, is Robert Shaw, doing the role he was apparently born to play. His old seadog has just the right amounts of Ahab and crustiness. When he tells the fate of the Indianapolis, you'll be chilled.
This modern classic has never been surpassed, not by its three sequels, not by its many imitators (Orca, Deep Blue Sea), or by the long line of big-budget thrillers it spawned (up to and including Spielberg's own Jurassic Park). This remains the pinnacle of its curious subgenre, the force-of-nature monster, a beast that is terrifying only because it follows its instincts. By the way, Universal has just re-released Jaws with all the goodies, like deleted scenes, and a Dolby soundtrack. Check it out, because this is one movie that you should probably have around the house.
The story, as most of you know by now, is simple on its face, concerning a small New England island, Amity, and its shark troubles during one Summer season. That's it really for the premise, and the deceptive simplicity is one of the reasons that the Jaws sequels have not faired so well as this work of brilliance. Most of the sequels misconceived Jaws as a kind of slasher film, with a shark in place of a masked, voiceless human. (Interestingly, one of the child victims in Jaws is played by an actor named Jeffrey Voorhees--coincidence?)
Jaws is a penetrating drama, a kind of throwback to 1950's monster films, and as I mentioned in my first paragraph, can even be seen as science fiction (just like many of the 1950's monster films). It's not futuristic, but its biological facts are accurate (surely with some thanks to Ron and Valerie Taylor, shark experts who filmed the live Great White sequences) and much of the approach to hunting and killing the "monster" is rooted in science.
Famous Quote: Brodie (Scheider) You're gonna need a bigger boat.