Yaahd

Brody walks with a slightly bent back across the room (another subtle piece of physical acting by Scheider) and peers out the second window overlooking the back yard. The couple's next exchange ('Can you see the kids?' 'They must be in the front yard.') implies that the community is safe enough for children to wander around unsupervised - in fact, the two Brody boys make a habit of it, playing out on their own on the dock and later evading their mother's watchful eye on the Fourth of July beach. Later Brody will make a speech to Hooper about the dangers of New York ('Kids can't leave the house. You've got to walk them to school.'), suggesting that their childrens' welfare was one of the major factors in their deciding to move to Amity.

When Ellen teases her husband about his accent ('In Amity you say yaahd.') there is a hint of metropolitan mockery in her tone. He jokingly responds with a trinity of elongated vowel sounds ('They're in the yahd not too faah from the caah.'), but in his case the mockery seems to be aimed more at himself, and his imitation of the local pronunciation -albeit a caricature- a sign of his wish to fit in. When he asks his wife for her opinion, she responds critically in an exaggerated New York accent, implying that he will always be an outsider. Of the two of them Ellen seems the least settled. Beside her on the lower shelf of the bedside table is a folded copy of The New York Times, and later in the hospital scene (after her son Michael's close encounter with the shark) she tentatively suggests a return to the city - a suggestion which her husband firmly rebuffs. It's only by the time the sequel comes around that she has established herself as a pillar of the Amity community.

The end of the couple's exchange is filmed with a hand-held camera, somewhat in the style of a John Cassavetes movie - an actor whom Scheider himself coincidentally resembles. As the director of movies such as Faces, Husbands, and A Woman Under the Influence, Cassavetes often cast an unerring critical eye on marriage, and perhaps Spielberg intended to ground his picture in reality with this early scene of playful marital sparring.