|
chris kilby -> RE: EMPIRE ESSAY 2: Jaws (24/6/2012 9:19:34 PM)
|
Just saw Jaws at the cinema again for the first time since 1975. It was the first film I ever saw at the flix (I was 5!) and it's still as good as ever - arguably Spielberg's best.
It is quite simply a perfect movie. Everyfin (sorry) about it is absolutely spot-on - script, direction, casting (right down to scene-stealing non-professional locals like Lee Fierro and Craig Kingsland who Quint was actually based on), acting (you could have heard a kelp fart in the surprisingly crowded cinema during Robert Shaw's Indianapolis speech), editing and the music - hoo-boy, the music. Again, arguably John Williams' best. And undoubtedly one of THE best film scores of all time. Even people who have never seen Jaws recognise that music. There's not many films that can claim that.
It's funny too. And it doesn't mess about. Neither fast-paced nor leisurely, there is not an ounce of fat on the whole movie. Each scene does what it has to then moves on, meshing perfectly with the next. Jaws is like a shark itself - a ruthless entertainment machine. Overbearing cinematic oafs like Michael Bay should be forcibly strapped down and made to watch Jaws on a constant loop, Ludovico-style, till some of the valuable lessons of this cinematic masterclass sink in.
Jaws is so of its time yet it hasn't dated at all. Both the tail-end of the played-out disaster cycle and an uncharacteristically classy example of the cheesy revenge-of-nature movies of the time. And despite what Peter Biskind says, Jaws is as much a 70s movie as Badlands or Taxi Driver - the wonderfully shifty Murray Hamilton as the venal Mayor even suggesting shades of conspiratorial Nixonian unease. Indeed Jaws straddles the American New Wave of Hollywood's ""Second Golden Age" and the blockbuster era it ushered in with an ease no other film (and no other filmmaker) could have ever hoped to achieve.
I even like the much-maligned shark. Good old Bruce doesn't look that rubbery to me and - be honest - who doesn't jump the first time his smiling fizzog looms out of the water at the criminally underrated Roy Scheider?
An undisputed classic, a cinematic triumph and 5 stars I can't imagine anyone ever disputing. And in glorious 2D stereoscopic flatovisionTM as well!
|
|
|
|
