Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. No less, the poster is up in my living room*. As I type that, it’s more shocking than anything else that I haven’t re-watched in the four years since I’ve started these reviews.
Did I Like It: There’s plenty for someone to love about this movie even from a distance. The cinematography is as good as anything has ever been. Every frame of the movie has nearly perfect construction, which is all the more impressive when one considers that the entire film actively tried to shake itself apart from the beginning principal photography. As a first major release for Spielberg, the film proves beyond all doubt that he could turn disasters into hits. I’d submit that any of his New Hollywood cohorts would have collapsed under the pressure of making the film. Coppola? Lucas? Hopper? We never would have heard from Hopper again if he had to deal with the shark.
“The shark looks fake” is a hoary cliche of a joke, but it can really only be leveled at the sequels. Whether it is because of Spielberg’s inherent sense (brought to full bear in Jurassic Park (1993)) to avoid showing us the monster for as long as possible, or if that sensibility came about because the shark was an unreliable diva, the shark makes maximum impact when he finally does emerge from the water.
The score is arguably John Williams’ simplest, but it might also be among his most iconic. Not bad for what on first blush is just a cacophony of piano and bowed strings.
But the real secret power of the film—and one that many big movie entertainments did not try to emulate—are the performances. The movie may never be deep, profound drama, but each of the three main leads behaves in the film in a memorable way. When it’s now several days since I re-viewed the film, and I still can’t get “Show Me The Way To Go Home” out of my head, that may be undeniable proof that the movie is only kind of about a shark.
*Along with the iconic art deco poster for The Rocketeer (1991). There’s a certain odd symmetry between them, with both Cliff Secord and Bruce the Shark staring at a hook for hanging plantss that predates our buying of this house.