As Jaws turns 50, who is the blockbuster's real hero?

Sydney Morning Herald

15 hours ago

That relentless, rumbling music – DUM-dum DUM-dum DUM-dum – like a heartbeat gone awry. The mayor who wants to keep the beaches open (and his equally obnoxious tailoring). 'You're gonna need a bigger boat.'
These may be your recollections of Jaws, released 50 years ago in June 1975. But as so often with classic movies, your memory may be as faulty as an animatronic shark. Watch it again and, in particular, you may conclude that the real hero is not who it first seemed.
Jaws is a story of two halves. A killer great white shark terrorises Amity Island, a pretty New England resort. Then the local police chief pursues it on the waves, in company with a bumptious marine biologist and an unhinged shark-hunter. The tale of how the film was made likewise involves a man – Steven Spielberg, then 27 – triumphing over nature. Jaws made his career, but only after his choice to shoot at sea almost wrecked it. He ran way over budget and schedule. Boats sank when they weren't meant to. Actors feuded and drank.
Yet Jaws became the prototype summer blockbuster and a model for big-splash action extravaganzas. For generations of fans, this saga of American grit and ingenuity has had an all-American hero: Brody, the police chief, played by Roy Scheider. Brody is an everyman, who loves his kids and likes a drink and a cuddle with his wife. He has flaws but also a conscience, plus the guts to vanquish the monster.
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Brody was an apt champion in the wake of the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. Rather than covering up his part in letting a child paddle to his doom, he accepts it. 'In Amity,' he declares, 'one man can make a difference!' That was a stirring credo for a public servant in a disenchanted age. Still, just as you can't lower a shark cage into the same ocean twice, today Jaws makes a new impression – and Brody has a rival.
Famously, the shoot's biggest hiccup was the replica sharks. 'What would Alfred Hitchcock do?' Mr Spielberg asked as they malfunctioned. He fell back on portents and mystique, flashes of fin that were menacing enough to scare viewers away from seas, swimming pools and bath tubs. The upshot is that you dread the shark and long to see him.
For well over an hour, you barely do. But you see what he sees from the start. The film's signature technique is the underwater shark's-eye view, the camera looking up at frolicking holidaymakers or poised at the sloshing waterline. Admit it: as you track the shark's gaze, you want him to chomp some of those delicate legs. After all, no mastication, no movie. Each grisly meal supplies a shiver of relief that he got someone else, not you.