For a while, I've been thinking about a comment Toto made in regards to my review of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I had opined that Raiders of the Lost Ark is, arguably, a perfect film, and he stated that he felt Jaws was just that, a perfect film.
Well, yes, of course. Maybe I thought that was too obvious a point to make. But just to be clear: Jaws isn't "arguably" a perfect film, it is a perfect film.
Peter Benchley's novel, if you've never read it, is a crackling good yarn, but the film adaptation is better. A galley proof of the manuscript was sitting in a pile at Universal Studios, where a young Steven Spielberg found it, read it, and said, "I want it!" Despite the box office failure of his first big-screen film (The Sugarland Express), Spielberg was still riding high on the success of his made-for-TV thriller, Duel. He got his wish.
Carl Gottlieb, originally hired to act in the film, ended up co-writing the screenplay (Benchley did the original adaptation). The more soap opera aspects of the story were kicked to the curb (for example, in the novel, Hooper has an affair with Brody's wife). The result was a tighter, leaner story, something you watch and simply go, "Well, sure, that’s perfect."
The film's casting is beyond reproach. Roy Scheider, as Brody; Robert Shaw, as Quint; and Richard Dreyfuss, as Hooper. There was some debate over who would get top billing. Go watch your copy of the film (and if you don't have a copy, shame on you, run out -- right now! -- and buy one) and you'll see that all three names come on screen together.
The supporting cast is equally great, including Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody and Murray Hamilton as the Mayor. Every single person cast is note and picture perfect for their role. Even small roles became great. Haven't you ever wondered why the production company behind House M.D. is called "Bad Hat Harry Productions"?
Jaws begins with terror, a college student on a midnight swim dragged to her death by an unseen horror. After grabbing your attention you are introduced to the cast in series of small moments. It's all exquisite; sometimes a tad cliched, yet always spot on. Nothing ever rings false, everything just builds. It's one perfect step after another.
Whenever you read about the film's production, you hear how a three-month shooting schedule became nine (long enough for Universal to have to cover Shaw's US income taxes; it was a clause in his contract). How a $3 million budget rose to over $9 million, almost unprecedented at the time, certainly for what was supposed to be a quick summer thriller. The editing ratio is historic. This measures the amount of film shot against the amount that ends up in the final print. A ratio of 3:1 was the norm; Jaws was something like 12:1 (if I remember correctly). Verna Fields earned her Best Editing Oscar.
What you seldom read about, unless you were a subscriber to American Cinematographer, was the planning, blood, sweat, and tears that went into filming this fish tale. Director of photography Bill Butler was already well established but to see his work here is to fully appreciate the man and his craft. It's not just the inherent pain in the ass that filming on water brings to a production, it was how he handled everything.
A case in point is the sequence where Brody asks the local ferryman to take him out to where some Boy Scouts are swimming, earning their merit badge. From the moment the mayor's Caddy drives onto the ferry to the end when Brody buckles under the mayor's pressure is one long take. While normally the camera would move, from establishing shot to group shot to medium-shot to close-up, here the camera is bolted to the ferry. The actors had to move to adjust the shot. Everyone had to know their lines, how they would act, how they would move, when to move from here to there, etc. All the while, the ferry is moving out into the cove. The result feels like a discrete series of shots, but in reality, as said, it's a single take.
That one scene is a film school lesson in and of itself.
Jacques Cousteau hated Jaws because he felt it gave sharks a bad rap. He would know, since he wrote the first book on sharks I ever bought (and still have). He pooh-poohed the entire notion of a shark leaping out of the water and onto a boat. Of course, now we have all those spectacular You Tube videos of "flying" sharks doing just that. Maybe Jacques over-reacted.
Audiences certainly did. I certainly did. I first saw Jaws at a sneak preview for Bay Area theatre owners; people screamed, popcorn flew. On opening weekend I saw it three days in a row, going with different friends each time. I paid to see Jaws on the big screen 15+ times, a personal record that stood unchallenged until Star Wars.
Steven Spielberg is cursed for creating the summer blockbuster and thus destroying "serious" film. His weapon was Jaws. It went on to shatter all box office records at the time. No one paid much attention to how much it made opening weekend, but everyone paid attention to the fact that it kept bringing people back time and time again.
There are certainly more important and historical films, films that have more depth, that are moving and, damnit, just more serious, but so what? There's not a single frame that needs to be changed in Jaws, not a single line of dialogue that needs to be altered, not a single note of John Williams iconic score that needs attention. For what it is, it is perfect, and one of my all-time favorite films.
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