The ferry scene concludes with an abrupt cut to a crowded beach. There is no establishing wide shot and it is only after the camera has panned and tracked across the entire beach that we get some sense of the geography of the scene. The first figure we see is that of an overweight woman. Dressed in a striped bathing costume, she strides purposefully into the ocean, the skin on her arms and legs puckered and wrinkled by folds of fat. This was no doubt intended to provoke an ironic smile, but the potential for developing the 'people as food' motif would have to wait until Jeannot Szwarc cut together a montage of plump holidaymakers snacking on hot dogs for his beach scene in
Jaws 2.
Back in the 1970s obesity levels in the US were not as high as they are today, and - with the exception of a few well-fed selectmen and some beer-bellied fishermen - there is no much evidence of a weight problem in Amity. Indeed, if you look at the
figures scrambling out of the sea during the Fourth of July panic, it's difficult to see any evidence of bad diet.
