I was just thinking earlier today about a line from the film that, as a kid, I never got the meaning of, until many years later... "Here's to swimmin' with bow-legged women!" When I was younger, I just thought it was a weird, quirky line that Quint was saying because he was a weird, eccentric sea captain type. Of course, as I got older, I realized that the line had a much different meaning entirely!
A brilliant film, the second half pretty much perfect. The relationships, power plays and flaws of the 3 characters as great as in any film. And if it wasn't for the various flaws in their characters/relationships they could have defeated or at least escaped from the shark easily e.g. Brody is dismissed when he says "It's my charter", and Quint tells him "It's my boat". Lots of little touches, must have seen it dozens of times before I noticed a moment where they first encounter the shark and Hooper is preparing the barrels and he almost picks up a piece of his equipment (which could presumably easily kill the shark), before muttering to himself something like "Your turn first Quint" then carries on preparing the barrels rather than using his modern methods. Something I can't work out with the Ben Gardener head scene and discussion with the Mayor: So the story goes that the head coming out part was added after the rest of filming had finished and it was done in the editor's pool to add another scare, which is why finding BG's body is not mentioned in the Brody/Hooper/Mayor Vaughan discussion, only the tooth. However, when Vaughan asks about the tooth, Hooper sheepishly says he dropped it ("had an accident"? IIRC?) - which we understand to be when BG's appearing head made him drop it. But if this discussion scene was filmed entirely before the head appearing was even thought of, why/how did Hooper lose the tooth in the original version of the scene?
It's a masterpiece of pacing, storytelling, editing. The scare factor isn't relevant after a couple of viewings.
Just watched it again after not seeing it in decades! I remember reading the book right when it was released. It follows it to a "T"! The sequels were terrible, but that 1st movie sure has legs underneath it! I lived on L.I. when it was 1st released. Used to go to the Hamptons all the time. I'll never forget how, in the middle of the summer, NOBODY was going into the water!!
The first time I saw this film I was very young. I had a babysitter who wanted to see it a second time at the theater and she said she’d warn me when we got to the scary parts But near the beginning of the film there’s an underwater scene where a human head floats out of a hole and man I was horrified I said, You were supposed to warn me! But apparently she forgot that one Freakin Jaws man, left a big impression
I'm in the middle of re-reading the original Peter Benchley novel.... such a different experience than watching the film... you could write an entire essay about all the details from the book that were changed (or removed altogether) for the movie.
I read the book when I was 8 in 1975 and I may have read it again after I saw the movie in 1979 or after I loved "Jaws 2" in 1978 - not sure. All I do know is that the paragraph in which Benchley describes how long Chief Brody spends urinating stuck in my mind! A reference to his bladder being the size of a watermelon, IIRC!
DVD player died on me, so I got a Blu-Ray player and I actually meant to get 1,2 & 3 of Jaws on Blu-ray but at the time of buying Jaws I could only find Jaws the original and none of the others! By the way the only other Blu-ray I have in my collection is Saga - Spin It Again, Live In Munich! But I do have about 150-200 music/film DVD's! Nowadays I have a monthly subscription with the Swedish streaming service Viaplay that provides us with the films that came out in the cinemas for free after about a year or if we can't wait that long we can rent films that are only a few months old, so no need for a Blu-ray player or discs anymore!
It worked for me 30 years ago and it also worked with my son, 5 years ago. "Jaws" is a timeless stone classic, much creepier than most recent horror / thriller movies.
Well....which is it? Is the book very much like the movie or isn't it? My recollection is there are several subplots in the novel that are not in the movie including one where Brody's wife is having an affair. Was it with the mayor?
Exactly: the affair between Hooper and Brody's wife is not in the film plus Hooper gets eaten in the book. In my case, the movie was scarier than the novel, specially thanks to William's "terrific" soundtrack.
I guess my memory is what it is! All those points about Hooper were/are completely forgotten by yours truly! This is making me think that I have to read another book, The Exorcist, that I also thought was made into a movie perfectly. Wouldn't surprise me to find my memory is acting up again!
I have a friend who loved "Tree of Life" so much that he purchased a BD player just to watch it. You'd think he might grab a few other discs - ya can get 'em cheap - but nope. He's a weirdo anyway. When Criterion put out the extended cut of "Tree" a few years back, I figured he'd be super-excited. Nope - I offered to loan him the Blu-ray and he wasn't interested. He likes a movie so much that he spend $75 or whatever on a player just to watch it but he won't check out an alternate cut that a friend offers him for free?
Those are a couple of the big ones, yes, but there are plenty more... I had almost forgotten how drastically different the book and film really are until re-reading the book over the past few days. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that there are more differences than similarities... aside from the basic premise of a shark terrorizing Amity Island, and the core cast of characters, the movie actually doesn't follow the book very closely at all.
There a lot of differences between the book and the film and for me this is one of those relatively rare occasions when the film is better than the book. Spielberg felt that the principal characters in the book were not very likeable, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something along the lines of when he read the book he was rooting for the shark!! So he made the relationship between Brody and Hooper much warmer in the film than in the book, hence removing the affair subplot. Another subplot involving the Mayor having connections to the mob, which was influencing his decision to keep the beaches open, was another one which was jettisoned. The famous speech Quint gives about the Indianapolis was also not in the book, there is some dispute who did come up with it but seems Robert Shaw had a big hand in it. Of course the ending is different to the book as well, Spielberg felt there needed to be a "big rousing ending" and he was absolutely right.
