Jaws

(1975) *****

Let's go back to Sean Brody on his capsized sailboat. He stares in horror into the shark's mouth, as his rescuer, Marge, is shredded between teeth. He stares into those eyes.

Now to Quint, giving his account of the USS Indianapolis events:

"Sometimes that shark he looks right into you, right into your eyes. You know, a thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at you, he doesn't seem to be livin'...until he bites you. Those black eyes roll over white and then...Oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'."

We hear his story and can't take our eyes off his face. We're so captivated by Robert Shaw here, we could easily forget that Richard Dreyfuss is in the same shot the entire time, his face bearing the same riveted expression as ours.

Dreyfuss himself, is fantastic with his reactions the entire film. When investigating the wound of the first victim (Played by Susan Backlinie, the first one to die in Day of the Animals, remember that?) he peels back the plastic covering her remains and then gasps for a bit before nervously continuing into his recording device, "The torso has been severed mid-thorax. There are no major organs remaining --- May I have a glass of water please?" He continues to dictate the horrific wounds and we never see once see the body. And while we see the occasional severed body part and we see the faces of a few of the victims during attack, we only once see the face and the wound together, and that's when Quint gets devoured at the end. Prior to that the horror is stirred with flashes of the shark and some of the most evocative dialogue ever written for a horror movie.

As I mentioned in my J:TR review, the Jaws series gets tons of mileage out of revealing the shark only in flashes. When we can't see it, it could be anywhere, and anything could turn out to be the shark; the cresting bump of the head of a human swimmer, a screaming teen lurching up laughing on her boyfriend's shoulders. This makes the moment when Alex Kintner, the first public victim, is attacked that much more surreal. We don't see what's attacking him, but we see him, curiously small and distant in the frame (and eerily quiet through the speakers), rising up an unnatural height from the water, and immediately every witness knows that something is happening that should not be.

Even at the heartbreaking conclusion to the scene, when parents stand relieved on the shore, we see Mrs. Kintner step away from the crowd and we stay with her just until the exact moment when it dawns on her that she's the only parent standing there without her child. We cut away just before what must have been a terrible scream.

What makes Jaws special is that it's these moments of horrific emotional intensity which carry the film and not the gore.

When I envisioned the Real Killers and Animals concept for this year's Thon, I considered the the Gacy/Ed Gein/Dahmer/Bundy biopics the centerpiece of the Real Killers side. I wanted the Jaws movies to be the centerpiece of the Animals side. I decided to watch and review them in reverse order because Jaws is a masterpiece and we all know how hard it is to write reviews of masterpieces. This turned out to be a rewarding way of going about it; I finally noticed how good Jaws 2 is, out from under the shadow of the original, and I avoided having to end the whole thing on the relentlessly sour note that is Jaws: The Revenge.

Instead I got to end on this beautiful, perfect film.