Jaws Review and Scene Study

Heres the scene I picked! 

1. What is the Story? 

1. The “heart” of Jaws occurs at the beach when the mayor and tourists finally get a glimpse of the shark. When the reports of the shark were coming in Brody wanted to shut the beaches down but the mayor was persistent in keeping the beaches open because it was the busiest time of the year for Amity.  From any audience perspective, you could relate to the actors on the beaches becoming terrified of being hurt by the great white. Speilberg carefully selected his shots to be more up close with the shark instead of it being from the sand. I believe this was for the audience to understand the magnitude of the shark and the fear he possessed. Once people were out on the beaches and saw the shark with their own eyes the island collectively knew Brody, Quint, and Matt had to go kill it. 

2. What is the camera doing? 

1. As mentioned before, most of the shots are mid-level or close up with eye-level shots with cuts of Brody on the beach and the kids sailing in the pond area when the shark approaches. However, when the shark approaches someone in the water it would become a POV, zoom-in, low angle shot. Essentially, we could see what the shark is about to do. If Speilberg decided to do long shots, I think we would been lost as the emotion or intensity of the moment with the shark. Lighting above water is naturally bright because of the sun but if the shots would cut underwater it would be somewhat hard to see because the lighting would be darker from the water. 

3. Cultural Relevance

1. As we noted before the film showing this was the first blockbuster film. Blockbusters are when a movie generates so much viewership, popularity, and profits it becomes iconic. In many ways people have never seen shark attacks before and it appeared to be realistic. In a sense, this could happen to anyone in their daily lives. Aside from the shark, much of the acting propelled it into that Blockbuster category. We see a lot of notions about gender and male stereotypes. For example, quint is the hardworking male with little education and Matt is the sheer opposite, with lots of education and little manual labor. Quint tests Matt throughout the movie to see if he is “man enough” but judges him because he is not from amity and has “City hands”. However, we see Matt and Quint have a brief moment of bonding on the boat when they are talking about the scars they gained over the years. Quint begins to respect Matt because he seems tough and has been in the real world. In the perspective of Gender, Ellen plays a stereotypical loving mother and wife. It appears that she is a housewife and the men in this film do most of the “tough work”. I think this was well known given the time period of the film being released so it didn’t really bend any norms. 

4. What else? 

1. I have seen Jaws multiple times over the years. This film would always be on TV so I would see bits of it and eventually put the whole movie together. This was the first time I actually sat down and viewed the entire movie from start to finish. I definitely gained a new perspective on it. Especially with the pacing of the film, it was slower than I remembered. Although I do not think it was a negative thing, I think it was appropriate given the thriller genre. Obviously, the most entertaining parts of the film were the last quarter of it. I also enjoyed the Quint character, his past, and morals I wished we got to see a bit more of it.