JAWS is Brilliant

[DarkLene]

In its 50th year. Fraught with filming issues to the extent Steven Spielberg thought he’d shot his burgeoning career to pieces. But… it just fucking works.

If I wanted to I could find fault with a couple of scenes, but ultimately- it’s superb!

The main fault would be that stupid people genuinely thought great whites were the antichrist and killed them en masse. That makes me sad.

I love this thread! Don’t remember this much consensus since the Case of the ‘Lost’ Dyson Air Wrap. And no disagreement from me, one of those films which has so many “ooh, I LOVE this scene” moments.

I read the book in 2 afternoons of free periods at high school in the library when i was about 15 (had already seen the movie a few times by then) - totally unputdownable.

DH has suggested a pilgrimage to Martha's Vineyard (AKA Amity) - hell yes!

There was a really interesting programme on the use of music in Jaws - where the Jaws music is played when the shark is unseen but attacks. The audience gets conditioned to associating the music with Jaws

Except when the boys are pretending to be a shark - no music there.

And then when the actual shark is seen at 82 minutes. We get used to the music and the shark. So when there's no music and Jaws appears, it's a surprise!!

For anyone who likes Cautionary Tales...

https://timharford.com/2025/06/cautionary-tales-mutiny-at-marthas-vineyard-50-years-of-jaws/

My absolute favourite film of all time. Read the book in one weekend when I was a teenager then went to see it at the cinema when it came out. Love the scenes on the boat with the three of them. Me and my son do the sign-off to each other on the phone like Quint does over the radio to Mrs Brody who is actually the only character I don’t like.

Our yr7 teacher read it to us. I blame him for my life long fear of deep water. The film was pretty tame compared to the vivid description of them finding the torso on the beach in the book.

For anyone who's interested in the true story behind Quint's reminiscences, this is an excellent book:

amzn.eu/d/67vudeG