Jaws

I would like to start my film blog reviews with the film you had us watch two times over the coarse of this semester. I am actually very glad you chose to not only show this movie, but also have us watch it again with our newly acquired film knowledge at the end of the semester. To start I would like to say Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" is probably one of the closest to film perfection as a film major could hope of seeing and one day possibly creating. I would categorize Jaws as a cross between action and thriller that works so well because the characters in the film are people we can relate to. Brody played by Roy Scnieder he police chief, Quint played by Robert Shaw, an old seaman and Hooper played by Richard Dryfuss , the rich young oceanographer.  The story is simply centered around a series of attacks on swimmers by a great white shark on a resort island, which is desperate to attract people to its town when it starts to see its tourism rates go down. And this all results in the epic attempt by the three men to track the shark and kill it. Finally the greatest and probably most important character of the film is the shark itself. Partly they used shots of a real great white but mainly they used a mechanical creature modeled after the shark. "Jaws" is an adventure movie the likes of which we don’t get anymore. It has just the right amount of blood and guts to get the point across but no more than necessary. A few film elements that worked for this film I would say where the underwater "shark vision" and the perfect two-note music signaling the shark closing in on its prey. Jaws is nearly compositionally perfect utilizing strategically placed elements like color palettes, background and foreground staging, etc. For this only being one of Steven Spielberg’s very first jobs directing I think he nailed it.  He created a sense of fear of the water and what could be lurking in it with such minimal shots of the actual shark that it amplified the terror and for those of us who saw it when we were young can still conjure up those feelings when we visit any beach today.