Jaws

My thanks to Paul Rowe for the following article:


“The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.”

Typing these opening words to his as yet untitled novel in 1973, Peter Benchley would have been unaware of the impact he was about to make on popular culture. A couple of years later, ‘Jaws’ the phenomenon was in full swing – and cinema would never be the same again.

Credited with being the first summer ‘event’ movie is, perhaps, a dubious honour, but ‘Jaws’, when considered as merely a piece of cinema, more than lives up to its legend.

A girl strips off her clothes and bounds gleefully to the sea in the opening sequence, and we are taken in with her. When the camera sinks below the surface, prompting the first bars of John Williams’ immortal score, we know what she doesn’t. But we are powerless to help. Don’t go in, we implore silently. Towards the end of her futile struggle, she chokes, “Oh, it hurts”, through a mouthful of foam and blood, and is taken down for the last time. At this point, we exhale, and realise we haven’t done so for some while.

From this, arguably one of the most memorable openings in cinema history, the tension rarely relents. One by one, we are introduced to the main players: Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and Quint (a career best Robert Shaw). Brody’s fish out of water (if you’ll excuse the pun) city cop is perfectly pitched to conflict with Hooper, the wealthy shark expert from the Oceanographic Institute, who, in turn, is constantly baited by the domineering presence of old-school fisherman, Quint.

One of director Steven Spielberg’s achievements is in perfectly balancing the verbal interplay, resulting in the scenes of character development which bring relief between each action set-piece and prove as memorable as the shark attacks themselves. The script (credited to Carl Gottlieb, but in fact, somewhat of a joint venture) takes some of the plaudits, but ultimately it must be the director who receives acknowledgement for ensuring that, by the time the final hunt is on, these characters are as familiar to us as any cast member of a long running soap opera.

After a number of skilfully executed scenes of attack, public denial by the Mayor (Murray Hamilton) and his office, a handful of red herrings and – finally – chaos on the fourth of July, the three men set sail on Quint’s boat, the Orca, to hunt the shark. Spielberg’s masterstroke is to not allow the audience a sight of land again until the end credits, creating an environment of perfect claustrophobia in the most open location on earth.

Once the hunters have become the hunted, there’s nowhere for the Orca to hide and there’s no relief for the audience. The tension is cranked like woven steel fishing line. Man is pitted in a primeval struggle against an unthinking, relentless adversary; death itself, if you will. This machine-like predator will not be bargained with and will not see reason. If it catches you, you’re dead. The final reveal of the beast itself is delayed and perfectly timed, which offsets the film’s only true shortcoming: its modest and somewhat dated special effects.

The main players are not stereotypical movie heroes and are all the more human for that. Brody wants to be anywhere but on the sea and needs a bigger boat. Hooper believes technology will be his saviour. Quint takes it personally and is, as a result, perhaps the most cartoonish of all the characters; yet, ironically, he has the most human scene with his astonishingly haunting monologue on the fate of the USS Indianapolis.

Yellow barrels break the surface, heralding the next onslaught, whales call in the calm of night and Williams’ incessant score ebbs and flows, as the film builds to its frantic climax. Only then, as the survivors paddle to shore, are we allowed to relax. Now we can laugh and pretend we weren’t really that scared.

But we know, don’t we, that the next time we go in the water, a simple tune will float through our minds and we might just feel the need to look below the surface.

by Paul Rowe

PERSONAL FAVES: The French Connection

I’ve been laid up with a nasty case of the man ’flu (is there any other kind? can the man ’flu by its own definition ever be anything other than all-out life threatening?) for the last couple of days. Activity-wise, the pleasures of the cinema, the pub and my favourite Italian restaurant are out of the picture, so I’ve mainly been watching DVDs and surfing the net.

It was during the latter activity that I came across the latest in Jeremy’s Images from my all-time favourite films series on Moon in the Gutter: ‘The French Connection’. Out came the DVD and 100 minutes of classic cinema ensued. Thanks, Jeremy.

The film’s genesis was a non-fiction book by Robin Moore which detailed the efforts of New York narcotics cops Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso to seize and nail the prime movers behind a shipment of heroine from France to the USA. They began by surveilling a known crim, the spectacularly named Pasquale Fuca, on little more than gut instinct. The trail led to French drug lord Jean Jehan, who was assisted in his innovative import scheme by TV celebrity Jacques Angelvin.

Ernest Tidyman, in adapting the book, took certain dramatic liberties, hence a fair bit of name changing: the cops are now Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider), the neighbourhood hood is Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and the Marseilles mastermind, xenophobically nicknamed “Frog One” is Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) and the celeb in his pay is Devereaux (Frederic De Pasquale).

I’ve not read the book and I have only the most cursory knowledge of the real life case. I have, however, seen the film – the first of William Friedkin’s two bona fide masterpieces – more times than I can count and it was still as immediate and uncompromising and dynamic when I watched it yesterday as it was the first time I saw it – as it was, I imagine, when it first hit cinema screens in 1971.

I probably don’t need to rehash any of the plot. I probably don’t need to issue a spoiler warning when I talk about my favourite scene. I seriously doubt that a litany of classic moments is necessary (just check out the sequence of images on Moon in the Gutter – if they don’t make you immediately want to rewatch it, you might want to take a cardiogram just to check you’re not clinically dead). But screw it, for the record:

Doyle, dressed in a Santa suit, punching the hell out of a suspect. “Do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie? … You son of a bitch, you sat on the edge of the bed, you put your finger between your toes and you picked your feet.” Surely the greatest non-sequitur in the history of cinema.

Russo doing a B&E on Doyle’s apartment after Doyle’s last night’s pick-up leaves him restrained to the bed with his own cuffs.

Doyle and Russo shaking down a bar, cheerfully abusing the customers and punching out an informer just to protect his cover.

Doyle and Russo freezing their extremities off during a surveillance, scarfing junk food and chugging foul coffee while Charnier and an associate spin out a three-course meal at a luxurious restaurant.

Doyle almost coming to blows with the Federal Agent, Mulderig (Bill Hickman), who’s been seconded to the case. Mulderig has a low opinion of Doyle, holding him responsible for the death of a colleague in an earlier, botched operation. And where do they go at each other like men possessed? In front of the Chief, at the site of fatal traffic accident. Subtle!

Doyle tailing Charnier to the subway where the cunning European successfully evades him. Doyle hurls his trademark pork pie hat to the ground with such vehemence that the hatband bounces off.

Doyle taking an assassination attempt by Charnier’s hired gun very personally. Commandeered car / L-train / 80mph chase in downtown traffic. ’Nuff said. The best car chase in the movies. Ever. So says I and anyone who disagrees is welcome to accompany Doyle and Russo down the station and talk about it there.

Doyle haranguing a police mechanic when a suspected car is stripped to pieces. “I’m had everything off but the rocker panels,” the old-timer protests. “Aw, come on, Irv, what’s that?” Cut to: an air chisel slicing through the rockers. Guess where the stash is?

And then there’s that brilliantly, unforgettably cynical ending. As Charnier escapes (oh sorry: this is the plot spoilers bit, btw; so was the paragraph above, actually), leaving the rest of the conspirators, French and American, to take the rap, Doyle plunders about vengefully in a deserted factory. Russo joins him and almost gets shot for his pains. Then Doyle sees a figure in a doorway and empties his gun. It’s Mulderig: dead. Russo is shocked. Doyle barely registers what’s happened. “Frog One’s here and I’m going nail him,” he declares. He goes sprinting into another part of the factory. A single shot rings out. The screen goes black.

Damn near every frame of ‘The French Connection’ gives you a memorable image, a quotable line or some banter that zings (Hackman and Scheider play off each other effortlessly and with perfect timing); but it’s the ending I remember above all. It’s so chillingly ambiguous. Leaves just enough open.

Then, of course, they made a sequel. But that’s another story.