Jaws: Here's to swimmin' with bow-legged women.

Mr. Vaughn, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that's all.

I’ll come right out and say that Jaws is, and will continue to be, one of my favorite movies. It’s flawless. The acting, the story, the script, the directing, the feel of the film, the suspense, the terror, the social impact, the box office, the cultural impact: everything! It’s amazing what you can accomplish without CGI. Can you imagine what this movie would have been like if its makers somehow made it into the future and stole CGI technology, and created the shark that way? First of all, there’d be more of the shark, which would spoil the ‘less is more’ dread that is the trademark of the original. Secondly, for some reason, it’s gotten into the heads of filmmakers that a CGI creation looks and comes across as more real and convincing than special-effects make-up or props. No, no, no, no, NO! Not true.

Do you remember The Thing? No CGI. Horrifying. The original Nightmare on Elmstreet? Disturbing. Alien? Aliens? Predator? Even E.T. E.T.! What a note to end on? The original movie was perfect! But then the CGI-nazis came in and ruined it. I think it was like a 25th anniversary rendition, and they went in and made E.T. CGI! Blasphemy! It didn’t make any kind of impact, and in terms of audience reception, no one remembers it other than to make fun of it. If they go back to Jaws and make the shark CGI, I’ll lose my marbles. But back to the shark.

The shark finally made its appearance (besides those we see underwater, which was just the filming of real sharks), and it looked ferocious. If the jaws of Jaws looked fake because of the way they had to make it to make the shark’s jaws open and shut, the first thing I thought of when I first saw it wasn’t that it looked fake, but that this shark is such a monster that it even looks different from your everyday shark. You might as well make a movie about Moby Dick and remove the whiteness! Just because the prop isn’t going to completely resemble a real shark doesn’t mean you have to make it look like a cartoon, and it doesn’t mean the audience won’t click with some appearance-abnormality that you thought made the shark look fake, but which the audience thought made the shark more uniquely horrifying. When that shark jumped onto the back of their boat, and its weight made the back of the boat sink underneath its enormous weight, and Quint and Brody are struggling to stay at the front to keep of from sliding into the jaws, that shark looked absolutely amazing! You get a brief glimpse of it when Brody is throwing the chum off the side of the boat, but your imagination is just reeling about what this shark might look like completely out of the water.

I mentioned Moby Dick before, and it’s amazing to see how much Jaws and Moby Dick are alike, how Captain Ahab and Quint are alike, how Ishmael and Brody are alike in certain ways, and of course Moby Dick and the shark. Quint is one of my favorites. He is a man’s man. He is a veteran at the sea and, as we find out a later, a veteran of World War 2. In one of the best scenes of the movie, he tells the true story of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which was struck by two Japanese torpedos. As it sunk, 300 of the 1,196 souls on board died; out of the 880 that were left, only a small portion had life boats, or even life preservers. There they sat for the longest time because the Navy didn’t have any idea that they were in distress. Out of the 880, only 321 came out alive, with most of them taken away by oceanic white tip sharks. I can’t imagine the terror. Quint’s monologue is one of the best in movie history. This might explain his Ahab-like obsession with killing/catching sharks, especially his obsession with this shark, which seems to symbolize all his hatred against all sharks.

Roy Scheider gives an unforgettable performance as Chief Brody. He plays the perfect everyman. He is a family man, and due to almost drowning as a child, he has a fear of the water. Irony of ironies, he is chief of police and is notified about the recent mauling of swimmers by what Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) thinks is a rogue shark. Now he has to survey the beaches and be a glorified lifeguard, because the town’s mayor cares more about the money the town gets from tourists than possibly risking their lives in the jaws of a 35 foot, hungry, remorseless shark.

To watch the 3 characters (Hooper, Quint, and Brody) interact is the highlight of the film for me. Hooper and Brody have a kinship, because Brody sought Hooper's expertise, and Hooper knows Brody respects his knowledge and advice. Hooper is a peppery delight, probably a yuppie when not at work, but has enough charm and grace to not let his social class render him a snob. To more discerning characters like Quint, he won't let Hooper have a break, which oftentimes leads to hilarious exchanges. Just to see the expression on Hooper's face when, after Brody accidentally pulled the knot wrong that was holding up the compressed air tanks, and Quint says:

Yeah, that's real fine expensive gear you brought out here, Mr. Hooper. 'Course I don't know what that bastard shark's gonna do with it, might eat it I suppose. Seen one eat a rockin' chair one time. Hey chieffy, next time you just ask me which line to pull, right?

Or, when Hooper is playing solitaire and Quint tells him to stop playing with himself. Or, when they're arguing about fishing line and Quint says:

Well it proves one thing, Mr. Hooper. It proves that you wealthy college boys don't have the education enough to admit when you're wrong.

And Hooper makes faces at him. Or:

Quint: You have city hands, Mr. Hooper. You been countin' money all your life.
Hooper: All right, all right. Hey, I don't need this... I don't need this working-class-hero crap.

Hilarious. There are so many scenes that makes this movie great. When they're all comparing scars. When, after Quint finishes his beer and squeezes the can, Hooper finishes his water and squeezes a plastic cup out of some misplaced sense of competition. The ominous foreboding when Brody is flipping through the shark book: William's soundtrack is brooding and we see the flipping pages in the reflection of Brody's glasses, and we get quick cuts to horrendously grotesque shark wounds on various victims. Or the lighthearted scenes of Quint teaching Brody how to tie a knot. Quint scratching his nails on the chalkboard to get everyone's attention. The sleazeball mayor. Or, as the boat is sinking, and the water is up to their waist's, Quint humorously hands Brody a mini-water pump and tells him, "Pump it out Chief." Or the scene when Hooper is reluctantly going into the cage, and he's trying to wash his goggles, but he has no spit. Or when they're all comparing their scars. Or when you see the full length of the shark swim around the boat with Williams' score enhancing the sublimity of everything. The yellow barrels! When they pop up, you hear Hooper:

Boys, oh boys... I think he's come back for his noon feeding.

Or, when the light in the boat goes out, Hooper exclaims: "It ate the light." Or, how Quint wants to be cut off from the outside world or outside help, giving a real sense of Romanticism. I could go on and on. By keeping the shark off camera, we got suspense. As Hitchcock said, if you have a bomb under a table and it explodes, that's surprise; but if you have a bomb under the table and it doesn't explode, that's suspense. For nearly the whole time, the bomb was under the table.