The Time It Takes To Take The Takes

The scene between Brody, Hooper and Vaughn that plays out against the backdrop of the ocean and the defaced billboard runs – with the exception of a cutaway reaction shot at the end – in one fluid take lasting about three minutes. The technique goes back to Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and the technical experiments of Alfred Hitchcock in Rope and Under Capricorn, and was also admired and perfected by Stanley Kubrick, whose long tracking shots were one of his signature strokes. In both form (a single unbroken take) and content (a display of denial) the confrontation acts as a companion piece to the earlier ferry scene when Brody is persuaded into accepting the cover story of a boating accident to explain the first shark victim’s death. However, there are key differences that indicate the balance of power has shifted. In the ferry scene, Brody is alone against the local newspaper editor, the coroner and the mayor, all of whom act (and speak) as one. 

On the bluff overlooking the bay, it is now Vaughn who is isolated, hemmed in on both sides by Brody and Hooper, whose overlapping rapid-fire dialogue he finds it frustratingly hard to rebut. Two of the minions who backed him up earlier (Meadows and Hendricks) are too busy in the background supervising the repair of the grafittied billboard to lend support now. Gone too is the mayor’s avuncular tone and persuasive use of language. Caught on the back foot, he is reduced to desperate repetition (‘You don’t have the tooth?’) and evasiveness (‘Sick vandalism … a deliberate mutilation of a public service message.’). The contrast of location is also significant. In the earlier scene, Brody was literally penned up against by the rails of the ferry, just as he was boxed in by the official party line. Now, he moves freely along the top of the bluff, gesticulating expansively towards the community of Amity below.

If for Brody the conversation must have a sense of déjà vu, Hooper is unfamiliar with the Babbitism of small town politics and he begins with a degree of deference, a tone which strains and eventually snaps under the mayor’s persistent denial of what (on the billboard) is literally staring him in the face. Indeed, the scene plays with literal and metaphorical geography: Vaughn turns his back on Brody and Hooper and walks away, just as he metaphorically walks away from the problem. When he gets into his car at the end of the scene a road sign with the words ONE WAY stamped upon it points in the direction he is about to drive off in, indicating that the mayor, like another famous politician, is incapable of reversing a decision and making a U-turn.

Big Head

The shot of Hooper silhouetted against the light as he swims underwater towards Ben Gardner’s boat recalls the shark POV of Chrissie in the movie’s opening scene and the increasingly threatening music encourages the audience to anticipate another attack. In fact, the brief music cue that underscores the scene (called ‘Night Search’ on the original soundtrack recording) is a classic example of how film music is often required to change both in mood and tempo from moment to moment, expressing contrasting emotions within a few bars. High notes on the piano and shuddering chords convey the eerie atmosphere of the ocean at night and, as Hooper approaches the ravaged hull, a soft ostinato plays on the cello, reminding us that there is a shark somewhere in the water. 

Hooper discovers a hole below the waterline that recalls the image of the fishing boat in the book that frightened Ellen (that boat also had two fishermen in it). The ruptured planking also serves as a visual echo of the broken fence motif that runs through the early scenes of the picture. Nature, red in tooth if not in claw, is breaking through the barriers that man has constructed to mark out his territory. Hooper casts a nervous glance behind him, playing the beam of his torch over the murky water, before closing in on the hull to prise a white triangular tooth from the wood. We’re shown a close up of the tooth in his hand before there is a cut to a shot looking over Hooper’s shoulder directly into the dark hole in the side of the boat. Suddenly out of the darkness there lunges a white object, which, in the split second before it resolves itself into the shape of Ben Gardner’s severed head, could be the jaws of the shark. The visual shock is ramped up by an aural one as the shrill sound of high flutes and then shrieking violins (much like the ones Bernard Herrmann used for the Psycho shower scene) scrape down the soundtrack like Quint’s fingernails on a chalkboard. 

 

The big head of Ben Gardner is given enough screen time in close-up for us to register the gory details (the pale skin and the rictus scream, the one wide staring eye and the other wormy socket, the hair rippling like kelp) before there is a cut to Hooper’s reaction, his own startled face behind the mask mirroring the shark victim’s own disbelieving stare. Hooper’s screams – unlike those of the audience – are inaudible underwater, but expressed by the exhalation of his final gasps of air. He kicks towards the surface, abandoning the precious evidence of the tooth together with his knife and his torch. When he breaks the surface, the water all around him is a sulphurous yellow. He is caught in Brody’s spotlight as he swims to the boat, and when he grasps the ladder he can do nothing but look up into the camera, gasping both for air and for words. It’s likely that this coda was lengthened by several beats to allow the audience to settle down after the big shock of the dead fisherman’s head rolling into their laps. The next scene contains a lot of talky exposition, which could easily have been lost under the audience chatter that often comes in the wake of a big communal scare.

The story behind the movie’s biggest shock moment is part of Jaws legend. As originally filmed, Hooper discovered the remains of Ben Gardner by shining his light into the interior of the hull, and this was how the scene played out in early preview screenings. In fact, the reaction shot of Hooper (which was not reshot) is partially framed by the shattered wood as if the camera were inside the hull, which makes more visual sense in terms of the original concept. Spielberg was convinced, however, that he could get a louder scream out of the audience by making something jump out at them like in a Fifties 3-D horror movie. 

Unable to persuade the studio to back his idea, the director stumped up three thousand dollars of his own money to pay the art department to build a mock-up section of the boat hull and then with the assistance of a stunt double diver, editor Verna Fields’s swimming pool and some home grown special effects (Carnation milk and shredded tinfoil to give the water a murky look), he shot nine different versions of the shock reveal. He had these spliced into the scene and played each one to the post production crew, who by now had run the film so many times that they were inured to its scares. The version they reacted to was the one in which there is an infintessimal pause before the fisherman pops out like a head in a phantasmagoria, and Spielberg, always trusting his instincts, had it cut into the movie. He was so pleased with the effect it had on audiences - which he measured by how high their popcorn flew into the air - that he would make special trips to showings of the picture and sneak in at the back just to watch the reaction to that moment. 

Spielberg was clearly monitoring the picture closely during its previews for he noted that by ramping up the shock quotient in this scene, he had sacrificed some of the scare value in the movie’s other ‘big head’ moment - when the shark rears up out of the chum slick at the Orca’s stern. This scene now got less of a reaction than it had before, and the director rationalised this as the result of a greater sense of caution on the audience’s behalf. This may have been the case, but surely the Ben Gardner scene, with its atmospheric underscore and horror movie trappings, was always going to get a bigger scream by virtue of the fact that it had wound the audience up into a heightened sense of expectation before jumping out at them at saying ‘Boo!’ The shark’s sudden appearance comes – literally – out of the blue, and, as Hitchcock always observed, suspense is a much more powerful promoter of emotion than surprise.

Turn On Your God Light

A low angle shot of the boat in the fog cuts to a close-up of the fish finder – a grey box with a circle of compass headings on it – as it gives out a beeping sound, an echo of the eerie underwater sonar effect that played under the opening of the movie’s credits. Hooper’s first reaction is to dismiss the warning (‘It’s probably just a school of mackerel all flocked together.’), but the machine’s insistent beeping (which is not unlike the electronic warbling of R2D2) prompts him to check the boat’s radar. There is a cut to a close-up of him peering into the rubber visor (the green glow of which has been visible in the foreground) and then the camera tilts up to frame both Hooper and Brody in a tight shot, their faces lit spookily from below. 

As Hooper gives a directional heading (‘About a hundred yards south south-west.’), music underscores the moment with an eerie effect and continues to play as there is a cut to a shot of the boat moving across the screen. Hooper swivels the beam of the searchlight like an apprentice Jedi wielding his first light sabre, and it picks up a barrel floating on the surface of the dark water. There is another cut to a shot of a half-submerged boat in the foreground of the frame and then a shot of the same boat seen from the prow of Hooper’s craft as it approaches. Another cut to a low-angled shot of Brody, who has now taken command of the searchlight, its beam illuminating his face in a quasi-religious glow. The music on the soundtrack swells with an emotion that is closer to wonder than fear as another shot shows the partially sunken boat with the light now playing through its broken windows. 

The presence of the fog gives the slants of light an almost physical quality in an effect that Spielberg would return to again and again in later movies, and which became known as his trademark ‘GodLight’. A dialogue exchange (clearly dubbed in post production) establishes Hooper’s plan to check out the hull of the boat, and as he goes down into the cabin to change into his wet suit, he instructs Brody to ‘hit the lights.’ As if on cue, there is a cut to a slow tracking shot running the length of the abandoned ship; its shattered glass, twisted netting and cork floats, and the ravaged side are all seen in sharp silhouette as the light shines directly into the camera, producing a brief white-out of lens flare. At the moment the camera glides past what looks like a bite in the side of the boat, the music swells again, and then there is a cut to Brody peering nervously from behind a hand-held spotlight as Hooper affixes a ladder aft.

Given all that Hooper has been telling us about the habits of this particular Great White, his decision to get into the water seems at best foolhardy, at worst plain stupid. Antonia Quirke in her decidedly quirky reading of Jaws for the BFI Modern Classics series calls this the film’s ‘lone clumsy moment,’ but we the audience recognise that it’s genre convention rather than scientific enquiry that is providing Hooper with his motivation. He’s even obliged to calm Brody with a stock phrase (‘Don’t worry, Martin. Nothing’s going to happen.’) as on the soundtrack the trembling strings in a low register signal the exact opposite.

As Hooper swivels over onto the stern and drops into the ocean, there is a cut to an overhead shot of the boat on the water. The lights illuminating its underside are a sickly yellow and, along with the yellow torch that Hooper has taken with him, here is another example of the colour acting as an indicator of imminent danger. Glowing from below and from its sides, Hooper’s boat has morphed into one of the extra-terrestrial crafts that will swoop and buzz across the screen in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. The stylized lighting may in part derive from the fact that the scene was clearly shot in a studio tank (the water is too calm to be the real ocean), and the controlled conditions must have given the director more opportunity to play with his effects, perhaps already with one eye on his next movie.

I've Got Plenty Of Jackets

Brody looks over his shoulder at the bank of flickering TV monitors and, perhaps wishing he were back in the safety of his den, asks if they can pick up the late show - a joke that cues up Hooper's description of the equipment ('It's a closed circuit TV system. I have underwater cameras fore and aft.'). It also provides an unstated reason for why they have come out after dark into the stretch where the shark has been feeding: perhaps it's to capture photographic evidence to show to the mayor. However, as the movie's sequel will show, even that would probably not be enough for a man in denial like Larry Vaughn.

Brody clambers up onto the bridge to join Hooper and engage in some light-hearted banter during which we learn that the latter comes from good stock. Unlike the version of Hooper in the novel, Dreyfuss shows the character wearing his wealth and privilege as lightly as his blue collar denim jacket. Indeed, Hooper's wardrobe throughout the movie (docker's woolcap, the aforementioned denim, his off-the-peg jacket and woollen tie, his grey sweatshirt) seems determinedly downmarket. His only concession to the Seventies penchant for pastel is his pale pink undershirt seen on board the Orca.

Most of the wardrobe attention in Jaws is directed at Larry Vaughn's outrageous jackets and the more sober sartorial choices of the three main characters tend to go unnoticed. There's no doubt some intended colour coding at work: Brody in his sandy-coloured uniform (subliminally linking him to the land), both Hooper and Quint mostly in blue (associating them with the water). It's unlikely, however, that Brody's choice of black for the shark hunt is a signifier of death, or a deliberate yin to the Great White's yang, but it is effective in setting him apart from the two other more experienced sailors.

Bigger Boat

The next scene opens with a shot of the ocean at night, its surface wreathed in shifting banks of milky fog. A sleek white cruiser glides into the frame from the right, its motor chugging. The expensive-looking craft is a much bigger boat than the one Hooper arrived at Amity dock in. That more modest craft is seen clearly only in the deleted scene of his approach, a shot which was abandoned when Dreyfuss failed to master the basic seamanship required to guide it into the harbour.

An overhead shot of the rear deck shows Brody wearing an orange life jacket and clutching Hooper's second bottle of wine, pacing nervously as he gives a slightly slurred explanation of why he moved to Amity. His description of New York ('Violence, rip-off, muggings. Kids can't leave the house - you've got to walk them to school') would be familiar to the movie's contemporary audience from pictures like Klute, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups, all three of which featured performances from Scheider.

Brody's tipsy declaration that 'in Amity one man can make a difference' is undercut as a declaration of heroic principles by Hooper's response ('No kidding. Do you want a pretzel?'). Like the later example of Hooper crushing a Styrofoam cup in a mock display of machismo, it's an example of what Pauline Kael saw as Spielberg's ability to 'set up bare-chested heroism as a joke and score off it all through the movie.' By the end of the picture, when the sheriff is the last man standing (or leaning), the ironic jabs at heroism have been jettisoned in favour of a classic one-on-one showdown.

Half-Assed Autopsy On A Fish

The scene on the dock where Hooper cuts open the belly of the tiger shark is established with two quick shots: the beam of a torch and the reflection it casts on the blade of a long knife. The technique of visual shorthand is the same as the one used in an earlier dock scene where the two fishermen prepare their bait of holiday roast. The camera pulls back from the glittering blade to show Hooper's gloved hands inserting the knife into the corpse of the fish whilst Brody crouches on his haunches in the background, one hand held protectively to his face. In fact, Spielberg's original intention was to lead up to the scene with the two men approaching the dock from underneath whilst Hooper regaled the chief with a story of college telephone sex. Its exclusion from the final cut (it can be seen as a DVD extra) may have been due to running time constraints, but it was more likely the result of a decision to emasculate the character of Hooper and cast him in the role of the eager boy scout. Another element cut from the scene was the music. John Williams wrote a moody cue (in much the same vein as the music that accompanies Quint's Indianapolis speech) to underscore the action, but it was dropped by the director and only resurfaced when Joel McNeely recorded the full score with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra twenty five years later.

As Hooper saws into the shark's belly, he provides a commentary on his actions ('We start in the alimentary canal and open the digestive tract.'), which is free from the 'upper musculature' forensic gobbledygook he spouted in the Amity morgue. A milky liquid spills out onto the dock and as he reaches in to pull out the remains of undigested food he gasps for air. He tosses one whole and one half of a bonito onto the deck and they slither to a stop at Brody's feet. There is a cut to a low angled reverse shot as he throws a tin can onto the deck, and this reverts to the original master shot as he pulls out a Louisiana licence plate, which confirms his suspicions that the fish came up 'from southern waters'. Brody probably doesn't intend his question ('He didn't eat a car did he?') to be taken literally, although by the time the sequel came around the shark was taking on other modes of transportation.

Semioticians will no doubt be able to explain the significance in the number plate (007 0 981), and some might see the first three digits as a coded message for Spielberg's desire to direct a James Bond movie (a desire that prompted George Lucas to offer him Raiders of the Lost Ark), or the legend 'Sportman's Paradise' as an ironic commentary of the shark hunt. The audience is given time to register these details as Scheider picks up the number plate, twists it upright with an awkward arm movement and plays the beam of his torch over it.

Brody's need for confirmation that they have caught the wrong shark lacks any logic (Why not just present the results of their half-assed autopsy to the mayor in the morning?) as does Hooper's decision to go looking for the great white in the stretch where he has been feeding (What does he intend to do? Take a photo of it?). These blips on the story's radar, however, will be nothing compared to the gaping hole in the narrative that is soon to be revealed by the discovery of Ben Gardner's boat, and, indeed, it is this discovery that is dictating the characters' actions. The movie has been on land for long enough and it's time to go out on the water. Incidentally, another thing that doesn't quite make sense at the end of this scene is the architecture surrounding the two men. As they stride towards the boats they move through a half-complete barn-like structure that resembles nothing that we saw in the earlier daylight harbour scenes.

You May Want To Let That Breathe

Having appropriated a cliched husband/wife exchange ('How was your day?' 'Swell.') as an ironic greeting, Hooper claims Brody's uneaten meal and then nearly chokes on a forkful of food at Ellen's awkward attempt to start a conversation ('My husband tells me you're in sharks.') The light comedic tone of the scene is further established by Hooper's unlikely tale of how he first became interested in marine life. In describing his encounter with 'a four and a half foot baby thresher shark', he delivers an Indianapolis-lite monologue, deliberately playing it for laughs ('He turned an inboard into an outboard.'), which Ellen supplies as a dutiful hostess. Even when he segues into a more serious discussion of Amity's 'shark problem', the playful tone is preserved by the business of Brody pouring the wine - half a pint into his still-unfinished tumbler of scotch and then a splash for his wife and guest - and ignoring Hooper's sommelier advice.

Just as the early scene on the ferry anticipates the later confrontation between Hooper, Brody and Vaughn in front of the defaced billboard, so this dinner table scene acts as a companion piece to the moment on board the Orca when Hooper and Quint compare scars. Both scenes involve an uneaten meal, a trio of characters, one of whom is sidelined (at the dinner table, Ellen; on board the Orca, Brody), a story of an encounter with sharks (one comic, one tragic), and a shift from light-hearted banter to a darker tone. Even the way both scenes are shot (with the compositions framing two of the characters together whilst isolating the third) seem to echo each other.

Unlike the wine, the dinner table scene is allowed to breathe, with Spielberg letting the actors play out little pieces of business that lend it a sense of verisimilitude. Whilst Dreyfuss has the more showy role with his wisecracks and smirks and Lorraine Gary takes up the sentimental slack (a speech she makes about baby seals was excised from the final cut, but is available as a deleted scene), it is Scheider who once again owns the screen, peeling away at the wine bottle's cap and ever so slightly slurring his carefully considered words. The interplay between himself and Dreyfuss has a fresh improvisational feel to it, and the latter's reading of the line 'It's just a theory that I happen to agree with' is beautifully modulated.

The scene ends with Brody reasserting his authority ('I can do anything. I'm the chief of police'.) as he sinks the remainder of his wine. Is it too much to see in this act an echo of the famous moment in Rio Bravo when Dean Martin pours the whisky back into the bottle as a sign that he is taking up his responsibilities again? Certainly, the entire scene owes something to the group bonding scenes of so many Howard Hawkes movies, with its overlapping dialogue, ironic needling and bravado humour.

I Didn't Know What You'd Be Serving

In Peter Benchley's novel an awkward dinner party provides the narrative with a set piece of mildly satirical social commentary. It's likely that this chapter was similar to the author's first draft of the manuscript, which - hard to believe in retrospect - was primarily comedic in tone. In the book Hooper is one of several invited guests and it is his openly flirtatious manner contrasted with her husband's boorish behaviour that ultimately pushes Ellen Brody into infidelity.

In the movie Hooper gate-crashes the family's evening meal, but does so with such charming social elan that he immediately wins over the chief's wife ('Wine. How nice!'). His entrance takes place in the background and out of focus as the camera remains on a brooding Brody, and recalls an earlier scene in the same kitchen when the action was split between two planes of vision.  Hooper's first comment ('The door was open. Mind if I come in?') serves to illustrate the trusting nature of Amity society as well as obliquely referencing the door motif that runs throughout the movie. His brief exchange with Ellen ('Your husband's home?' 'Yes, he is.' 'I'd really like to talk to him.' 'Yes, so would I.') wittily establishes a sub-text tension between the wife and the ichthyographer that will fuel the homo-erotic imagination of future fan fiction writers.

Like any good guest - whether invited or not - Hooper has brought wine to the table, and his explanation of presenting two bottles rather than one ('I got red and white. I didn't know what you'd be serving') tees up a number of satirical visual or scripted references to dinner party etiquette.

A Boy's Life

The dock scene ends with a shot of Hooper looking on with an expression of concern as a humiliated Brody walks away from the dock. This cuts to the next scene, which takes place in the Brody's dining room. The right of the frame is dominated by an old-fashioned walnut sideboard with a set of azure napkins folded on one of its shelves, and on the left is the open doorway to the kitchen with its pale mustard fixtures. These two colours - yellow and blue - will provide the visual palette for the movie's final act at sea.

Ellen Brody, dressed in a kind of half-mourning of a black polo neck sweater and white bell-bottoms, comes through the doorway. As she walks to the table her gaze is directed off camera to the left and just before she bends down to clear away some plates she purses her lips into something that is not quite a smile - an expression that acknowledges the fact that her husband has left his meal uneaten. She gives one more meaningful look off screen and as she returns to the kitchen the camera pulls back to show Brody in profile, his bowed head resting on his supporting fist. Also in the expanded frame on the right is young Sean Brody, who has adopted the same pose as his dad. As Brody reaches out for a tall glass of what looks like scotch on the rocks, Sean takes a drink of his milk. When the father folds his hands together, the son does the same. In the background, slightly out of focus, Ellen returns with a cup of tea and leans against the door frame.

Brody covers his face with his hands in a gesture of shame and as he pulls his palms downwards, the camera cuts to a low angled shot to give us a view of his face as seen from behind the little boy's head. Out of the corner of his eye, the father notices his son's shadow play and playfully moves the fingers of his clasped hands, and then makes a face by baring his teeth - like a shark about to attack. Sean, who has lost his front milk teeth, responds with a gummy smile and makes his hands into claws. Brody leans foward and asks his son for a kiss, which he receives on his right cheek as a counter balance to the slap Mrs Kintner delivered to his left.

The sequence is underscored with a delicate nursery-rhyme-like melody played on harp, piano and vibraphone, and in the manner in which it brings a lump to the throat the scene can be rightly called Spielbergian. The use of shared body language to establish connections between characters is something that the director will return to in later films (Short Round and Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or Elliott and E.T in, er, E.T), and the use of carefully choreographed business within a single shot is one of his signature techniques. Scenes around the family dinner table will also recur in later Spielberg movies, although they are more often than not moments of discord rather than harmony.

The Woman in Black

Brody's eager introduction of Hooper to Vaughn is only cursorily acknowledged by the two men. The mayor continues working the crowd, pressing the flesh of Amity voters, while the fish expert - fixated by the bite radius issue - draws the police chief to one side. His line of argument draws on the language of risk and gambling ('...the chances these bozos got the exact shark ...' '...it's a hundred to one') in much the same way that the mayor and the selectmen did when they argued for keeping the beaches open in chapter nine of the novel. It's the precise phrase about the odds that attracts Larry Vaughn's attention and draws him into the conversation. Whilst Brody's initial reaction of denial is quickly overcome in the face of facts ('Maybe the only way to confirm it'), the mayor refuses to back down. Just as he got Brody to agree to amend his report with a combination of friendly persuasion and bullying, he seeks to contain the situation with an initial appeal for solidarity ('Now, look, fellahs, let's be reasonable') and then follows it up with an uglier line of argument ('I am not going to stand here ... and see that little Kintner boy spill out over the dock').

At the mention of the second victim's name, Vaughn's narrow-eyed stare is distracted by something off screen and there is a cut to the boy's mother approaching the dock. The movie's subliminal colour for danger is evident on the right of the frame in the form of the yellow road blocks and on the left by a fisherman in bright oilskin dungarees. As the camera tracks backwards the woman in the yellow sweater and hairband glimpsed earlier amongst the crowd comes into view. Spielberg cuts to a dramatic close up of the grieving mother's profile as she comes face to face with Brody. There is a certain theatricality to the scene: the measured approach of the woman in weeds and the dramatic gesture of the slap, which is followed by an accusation that in its repetition of the phrases you knew and my boy has a certain incantatory ton to it - elements that would not be out of place in a Greek tragedy.

A low-angled wide shot of the dock presents a tableau of Hooper, Vaughn and Brody against a backdrop of the chastened crowd and the crucified fish. As the chief walks away, mournful horns on the soundtrack signal the shift from the celebratory mood of the group with which the scene began to the tortured introspection of the main protagonist. The mayor once again takes control of the situation. He refers to the dead shark as 'an ugly sonofabitch', an epithet which Brody will use (but not complete) when he fires the fatal shot that blows up the air tank. Vaughn gives instructions for two fishermen to dump the carcass in the sea the following day, which serves to set up the upcoming scene where Brody and Hooper must perform their half-assed autopsy under the cover of night.

The Three Stooges

The three local fishermen who crowd around the dead shark's gaping maw have the appearance of a knockabout comedy act. There's the bulky curly-haired one in the camouflage jacket with the whiny voice, the plump wise-cracking one with the mustard-coloured pork pie hat, yellow shirt and blood-stained light blue jacket, and the narrow-eyed creepy-looking thin one dressed in grey. Creepy Guy taps the snout of the dead fish with a pen and wrongly calls it a mako (which he also mispronounces, shortening the vowel and putting the stress on the second syllable) whilst Pork Pie Hat peers into the gullet and makes a joke that references both Seventies mainstream porn and politics. Hooper is revealed as a passer-by in yellow crosses the frame from right to left, and he identifies the catch as a tiger shark, whereupon Camouflage Jacket turns and stretches out the word what? in a high camp voice. As Mayor Vaughn approaches, shaking hands as if he were running for office, Hooper, who has begun propounding his bite radius theory, is hemmed in by the locals. Creepy Guy stands behind him and in a strangely unsettling moment blows on the back of his neck. In a movement that acts as a counterpoint to Vaughn's eager advance, Hooper retreats across the frame from right to left as the fishermen, not wanting to be robbed of their moment of glory, shout down any suggestion that they've caught the wrong shark. Hooper himself seems to be doing a bit of back-pedalling by finessing his words - 'I'm not saying it's not the shark. I am saying that it may not be the shark. It's just a slight difference in semantics, but I don't want to get beaten up for it.' Hooper will revert to more semantic distinctions in the following dinner table scene when he tells Ellen Brody 'They caught a shark. Not the shark.'

Ben

Larry Vaughn's second appearance sees him sporting another summer jacket in pastel stripes that is reminiscent of the pattern of a deck chair. As he approaches the dock he asks Brody, 'Ben getting plenty of pictures for the paper?', which is either a reference to the uncredited Amity Gazette photographer or a fluffed line reading in reference to Harry Meadows. Or perhaps the sight of Richard Dreyfuss (who shared a few seconds of screen time with Murray Hamilton in The Graduate) acted as a subconscious trigger in the actor's memory and made him recall another Benjamin. Or perhaps he meant it as a sly reference to the rat that was the subject of a 1972 horror movie and a Michael Jackson hit. Or maybe he was chanelling George Lucas, who in 1974 was still going through draft after draft of his proposed space movie and working out the names for the characters. I guess we'll never know.

You Wouldn't Hit A Guy With Glasses, Would You?

Harry Meadows gets his picture for the paper and as the group of fishermen break up again Brody spies Larry Vaughn approaching the dock. The camera pans with the chief from left to right as he runs to share the good news with the mayor, and, as he walks, he puts on his glasses, which - perhaps in a moment of vanity - he had removed to have his photograph taken. We can assume that the character of Brody suffers from long-sightedness: he needs glasses to read the shark books (and to provide a reflective surface for the images to be projected onto), but he is able to draw a bead on the air tank in the shark's mouth without them.

Putting your male protagonist in glasses is one way of signalling that he's unlikely material as a hero, and perhaps the most knowing use of this trope is the thick-framed pair of spectacles worn as a disguise by Clark Kent. Glasses may also be used to suggest that the character is an intellectual or a scientist. Roy Scheider told Nigel Andrews he was initially unhappy with some of the decisions that were being made about his character. 'When the campaign to soften my part began, when they started to encourage me to make changes - wearing glasses, bumping into things and falling down - I was worried. [...] I resisted Steven at first because I felt he was pulling Brody back into wimpdom - which he was doing. He didn't want to give the audience one damn clue that it was remotely possible for me to kill the shark.'

Brody finally loses his glasses when a barrel strikes him on the shoulder as the shark threatens to pull out the Orca's stern cleats, and he has to face the monster - literally eyeball to eyeball - without them. There are, of course, practical reasons for getting rid of Brody's eyewear before the final confrontation - having to wipe his lenses before firing off a shot would have diminished the heroic nature of his final stand - but symbolically the moment is there to mark the character's transformation from observer to man of action. Interestingly, Hooper never loses his glasses, and, in fact, has to be reminded to remove them before he descends in the shark cage - for him they are a badge of his scientific discipline.

One Row Kneeling, One Row Standing

The next scene opens with a close up of a dead shark on the Amity dock. The camera tracks slowly back and a hook in the fish's snout lifts the jaws open to reveal a bloodied gullet. As it is hoisted into the air to the jeers of the crowd, we see that the animal - like a martyr - has arrows in its flank. It's unlikely, however, that any Christian symbolism was intended here, and if there is any reference it is that of the villagers persecuting the monster in an old Universal horror picture.

Fittingly for a moment of -albeit false - celebration, the colour palette is bright and vivid. Newspaper editor Harry Meadows, who is vainly trying to organise a group photograph, is wearing a rich burgundy jacket and deep red slacks. There's a man in an orange life jacket, a man in a pale green sweater and to the far right of the frame a woman in a neon pink jacket. As the camera pans with Meadows and his note-taking assistant (in a blue jacket and tartan trousers), a woman is seen at the edge of the crowd wearing a yellow sweater with matching blouse and hairband - a subliminal message that the danger has not yet passed. Towards the end of the scene when Mrs Kintner confronts Brody yellow becomes the dominant background colour.

Brody and Hooper walk into shot and the camera tilts upwards to catch the chief's smile of relief as he pauses to look at the dead fish. This is contrasted with a cut to Hooper, framed by the wrinkled carcass of the shark, frowning. As he turns away out of shot to the right his place is taken by a grinning Brody, who surveys the fish and asks, 'Ben Gardner get this?' This is, in fact, the first mention of the character's name and the audience has no way of connecting it to the bulky man in the camouflage jacket who led the posse of fisherman out on the hunt.

As Brody congratulates the men who caught the fish Hooper goes about checking the bite radius with a tape measure he has conveniently to hand. There is a cut to our first sighting of the Orca as it passes the dock with Quint alone at the wheel. A US yacht ensign flag flies from the stern of a berthed boat in the foreground, and in the background, on the other side of the channel, is a white lighthouse, like the one that will play an explosive part in the next Peter Benchley film adaptation. There is another cut to more shots of the crowd milling about and Harry Meadows, seen through a forest of fishing rods, finally begins to bring some order to the scene, telling the men in the first row to kneel down 'just like in high school.'. We then cut back to a closer shot of Quint sailing past. He touches the tip of his cap and gives a brief cackle of derision as he surveys the circus. Hooper is told to move out of the shot and the photograph - which will later appear blown up to the size of a billboard on the town beach front - is finally taken.

Probable Boating Accident

The next scene opens with a shot of the interior of the local morgue, or at least whatever passes for such a facility in Amity. Above a stainless steel surface is a shelf of artfully arranged bottles and to the right of the frame in a corner of the room is a cold storage unit. Apart from the bottles - some of which are of coloured glass, some of which contain liquids of blue or pale amber - the overall scheme is antiseptically white. On the far left of the frame, positioned on the edge of the work surface, is a plastic specimen bottle half full of a red liquid, which provides a visual echo of the crimson water in the previous scene.

Brody and Hooper are followed into the room by the medical examiner, who goes to the cold storage unit and retrieves a plastic bowl covered with a cloth. For some reason, despite the second attack on the boy and the story of the two fishermen's unsuccessful attempt to catch the shark, the authorities still seem to be sticking to their story of Chrissie Watkins being the victim of a boating accident. As Brody hands over the amended report he draws attention to the cause of death, which Hooper enunciates ('Probable boating accident') in a tone of disbelief. The chief averts his gaze and mutters a simple affirmative that essentially acknowledges his own culpability in the cover up. He moves to the window and tosses a wet oilskin jacket to the floor. It's an item of wardrobe that may have come from an earlier cut scene for its presence - like the towel the chief wears over his shoulder in two early scenes - is never explained. It does, however, provide a convenient visual metaphor that marks Brody's transition from a member of the group trying to cover up the threat to the one man who can make a difference. As he tosses the jacket onto the floor, he wipes his palms with a degree of distaste as if he is washing his hands of any previous involvement in the small town conspiracy.

 

Hooper draws back the cloth from the plastic bowl and gasps. He is wearing transparent surgical gloves and is kitted out with a microphone and a cassette player that allows him to record a commentary in typical autopsy-speak ('The right arm has been severed above the elbow with massive tissue loss in the upper musculature.'). Dreyfuss speaks the lines - which are interspersed with a polite request for and an acknowledgement of a drink of water - with an edgy rhythm, as if all the while he is fighting a gag reflex. He manages to reprimand both the medical examiner ('This was no boat accident.') and the chief ('Did you notify the coastguard about this?') with a superbly modulated delivery. The former phrase has passed into movie quote legend and was even referenced by Dreyfuss himself in Stakeout.

The framing of Brody against the window recalls the earlier images of the chief in the town hall meeting. As if it were not enough to have his professional integrity questioned, he is chastised when he attempts to light up a cigarette. Hooper moves around to the other side of the table on which the remains have been set and lifts the severed arm into view. This no doubt is the same limb that Brody found on the beach and it will later be echoed by the shot of the estuary victim's leg spiralling to the sea bed. As Hooper lifts up the marbled arm, he utters the phrase 'This is what happens', which - like the insert shot itself - remains something of a non-sequitur in the scene.

 

Hooper now segues from mortuary attendant-speak to shark expert-speak, announcing that the wounds indicate 'the non-frenzy feeding of a large squalus, possibly longimanus or isurus glaucus.' There is no mention at this stage of carcharodon carcharias, although Hooper will later use the Latin phrase when trying to convince Larry Vaughn of the threat to the community. As Hooper talks with an increasing sense of anger and even contempt, there is a shot of the medical examiner crossing his arms and lowering his gaze, in an echo of the defensive posture he adopted on the ferry. This is mirrored by a medium close up of Brody, whose gaze is directed to his right towards Hooper. When Hooper says the word 'propeller' Brody's eyes shift towards the examiner and his mouth turns up slightly on the left as a final acknowledgement that the truth has come out.

 

Hooper's litany of potential causes of the girl's death ('It wasn't any propeller. It wasn't a coral reef. And it wasn't Jack the Ripper.') move from the plausible to the unlikely to the absurd. There is a shot of his profile as he bends down to bathe his face and when he turns to the camera, his final line ('It was a shark.') provides an aural match cut to the next scene, just as the close up of his face provides a visual one.

Who Are Those Guys?

As he heads out to sea, leading a motley posse of fishermen, Ben Gardner delivers a mocking commentary in an almost impenetrable accent that has shades of W.C. Fields about it. Dressed in a working man's cap and a camouflage jacket, he's clearly a rootin'-tootin' hunting and fishing kind of guy, a fatter more loquacious version of Quint. Judging by Brody's later assumption on seeing the tiger shark strung up on the dock ('Ben Gardner get this?'), he too can also lay claim to a local reputation as a master of his trade. At this stage of the movie, we don't actually know his name, and later when his head pops out of the hole of his sunken boat it's so disfigured that we don't identify it - indeed, bereft of its bulky body, the head has an almost shrunken quality to it. Gardner has a mate on board; he looks suspiciously like the man in the yellow oilskin jacket and mustard trousers glimpsed out of the window of the harbour master's hut, but now he's dressed in dark clothes. This mate we can only assume was swallowed whole by the shark as his remains never resurface.

A wide shot of the boats in the bay reveals them to be only about a dozen in number (far fewer than Hendricks's earlier complaints would suggest) but when Spielberg cuts to closer shots of the craft weaving dangerously close to each other as the fishermen toss blood and fire crackers into the water, there's a real sense of confusion. Weighed down by too many occupants, some of the boats are riding so low in the water that they look as if they could capsize at any minute. Nevertheless, there's never any sense of threat in the scene, and the sight of a Labrador sunning itself on the bow of one of the boats adds to the easy-going tone. The snatches of dialogue (no doubt recorded later and looped in) bring out the competitive nature of the hunt, reflecting Brody's earlier comment before the town hall meeting that the whole thing is going to turn into a contest. We're also given a quick note on chumming in an exchange ('Chumming? What in the hell's that?' 'They're tricking the sharks out.') that is later echoed by Quint's description of his own modus operandi ('See, what I do, chief, is I trick him to the surface, then I jab at him.') To underline the mercenary nature of the hunt, the penultimate line of dialogue we hear refers to the bounty ('Ten thousand dollars divided four ways is what?') and there's something about the tone of it that always reminds me of the overlapping dialogue in the penultimate scene of Citizen Kane.

 

The final shot shows a bucket of blood being emptied over the stern of one of the boats and its outboard motor churning it into a crimson wake. It's on this image that the film cuts to the cold clinical interior of the Amity morgue, and when that scene ends it will cut back to the dock with another bloodied image of a dead shark's jaws.

The Name Of The Game

The continued activity on the dock is conveyed by extras walking past the windows of the harbour master's hut. The most prominent member of the group is a man dressed in a yellow oilskin jacket and mustard coloured trousers, who walks towards the hut just as Hooper passes outside from left to right and opens the door. He is wearing jeans, a denim jacket, a wool cap and a grey sweatshirt - utilitarian working men's clothes that belie his later admission of wealth.

When Hooper announces that the fan-tail launch is overloaded, Brody appeals to his deputy with a degree of familiarity and urges him to do the same to talk some sense into the fishermen ('Lenny, that's what I'm talking about. You know their first names. Talk to those clowns.'). Hooper's next question ('Can you tell me how I could find Chief Brody?') might seem disingenuous, given that the man he's talking to clearly seems to be in charge, or it may simply be that he's just following social convention - just as he will later demonstrate the correct etiquette by bringing both red and white wine ('I didn't know what you'd be serving.') to the Brodys' dinner table.

Brody's abrupt response ('Who are you?') suggests that he thinks this is just another fisherman in search of the bounty on the shark. Hooper holds out his hand and introduces himself, reducing his first name to a single syllable with no fancy academic title in front of it. He looks down at his extended hand in anticipation of a response and there's a minor beat of hesitation before Brody takes it. When the chief realizes who he's speaking to there's a sense of relief in his voice, and he claps Hooper on the shoulder and repeats his own name enthusiastically. Within a couple of scenes, Hooper will be on first name terms with Brody, which - if you're looking for a homo-erotic subtext to the relationship between the male leads - could be a good place to start.

The conventional introduction that identifies the oceanographer to both the movie's main protagonist and its audience is in contrast to the manner in which Quint introduces himself without any reference to his name ('You all know me.'). In Jaws, characters use names and titles as a means of asserting authority, or showing either affection or contempt, as well as a way of trying to ingratiate themselves. The mayor first hails Brody by his rank and surname from across the street outside the hardware store, but on the ferry calls him Martin. Ellen uses Brody's title in a way that is both mocking and tender. Quint delivers the same title with a degree of sarcasm, but on board the Orca uses it in a tone of respect. The fisherman barks out orders to Hooper in much the same way that Captain Bligh referred to Mr Christian on the Bounty, but later drops the honorific as an acknowledgement of the young man's bravery.

Rio Bravo

The next scene moves to the interior of the harbour master's hut, where Brody is on the phone to Polly, trying to get road blocks set up on the highway. Given that Amity is an island and the main -in fact, only - way to get there is by ferry, this seems like an unnecessary precaution; as Hendricks says, the people massing at the dock are 'from all over the place ... Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey' and it's not a local problem. Of course, overriding the broken logic of the scene is the key fact that Amity's police resources are being stretched to the limit.

In the Western the town's sheriff is either required to stand alone or has to depend on a small band of misfits to help him out. In tone Jaws is closer to Rio Bravo than High Noon, and the comic element is never far from the surface. Hendricks stands outside the hut, cheerfully observing the mayhem around him and returns a similarly cheery wave of acknowledgment when Brody attracts his attention by throwing tacks at the window pane. When reprimanded by his boss, the deputy's complaint ('I'm all by myself out there!') has the petulant tone of a child with no one to play with, and when Hooper interrupts the conversation with a prediction that none of 'the guys in the fan-tail launch' are going to get out of the harbour alive, he does so with a big grin on his face.

The crowd milling round the dock never suggests a sense of true mob anarchy, which you do get from crowd scenes in later Spielberg movies such as Empire of the Sun and War of the Worlds. In fact, the sense of panic and confusion is conveyed more by Brody's reactions to the situation than the actual numbers of bumbling fishermen who eventually set sail with their firecrackers and buckets of blood.

The Last Boy Scout

Matt Hooper is the last of the three protagonists to be introduced on screen and, although his first appearance is not as dramatic as Quint's or as enigmatic as Brody's, it establishes him as someone whose chipper exterior masks a hard-nosed expertise. As Brody and Hendricks intervene in one of the many disputes between the growing band of fishermen, there is a cut to Hooper climbing out of an outboard motorboat and onto the opposite side of the dock, where he is greeted by local fisherman Ben Gardner. It's an unobserved moment of irony that the first face he sees on arriving on the island is the one that will later stare sightlessly out at him from the shattered hull of a sunken boat.

In Benchley's novel Hooper's first appearance also takes place on the dock, but the description the author gives of the character ('young ... mid twenties ... handsome: tanned, hair bleached by the sun ... tall ...170 pounds') could not be further from the physical look Dreyfuss brings to the role. Unlike many short actors, he doesn't appear to have a complex about his height, and indeed his brief encounter with the towering bulk of Ben Gardner seems almost intended to draw attention to it. In a shot that seems to echo the one of Frank Silva that opened the scene, Hooper steps towards the camera and surveys the mayhem around him with a boyish grin as he removes his glasses and wipes away the spots of sea water. In an outtake of the same moment, the character can be seen wearing movie star type dark glasses, a choice that was perhaps originally that of Dreyfuss himself, who came to the location trailing something of the glory of film stardom behind him.

There is a cut to another angle that shows Brody unsuccessfully trying to direct some nautical traffic with Hooper looking on. It's not clear how this shot relates to the previous one in terms of the geography of the dock, but, like the sky that changes from grey to blue within the scene, it's not something you notice unless you're looking for it. Hooper steps in to intervene and establishes his own seafaring credentials with a couple of lines of dialogue that seem to contain a bit too much nautical ballast ('Don't raise sail, you're just going to luff with it. Do you have a paddle? So scull out of here.').

Hooper runs after Brody, calling deferentially for his attention, and is immediately seconded to help with the crowd control, which he willingly does in an eager boy scout manner. Unlike Quint, who speaks bluntly and uses terms of politeness only with a heavy sense of sarcasm, Hooper's language reflects an acknowledgement of social and civic order ('Gentlemen, the officer asked me to tell you that you're overloading that boat.'), and he takes disparagement with good humour.

Local Colour

The main purpose of the next scene (which takes place on Amity's dockside the day after the pier incident) is to introduce Matt Hooper, but it begins with the focus of attention on Frank Silva, the local harbormaster. A genial-looking elderly man, he emerges from his cabin (above which his name and station are written) and pauses front and centre of the screen to survey the mayhem around him. Wearing a black and white checked shirt over a striking red vest and sporting a nautical cap, he has about him the air of a cartoon character, a well-meaning Mr Magoo: he has what Nigel Andrews accurately describes as 'a serene, weather-ruddied, Toytown face'. The harbormaster looks about him with an air of benign amusement, puffing contentedly on his pipe while possibly totalling up all the mooring fees he's going to collect. He's holding what look like a couple of cereal boxes and a carton of milk to his chest.

The non-speaking part of Frank Silva was played by Menemsha lobsterman Donald Poole, a local character who so captivated Steven Spielberg with his fisherman's yarns that they lunched regularly together on set. Although he has no dialogue in the movie, Poole's brief appearance effectively establishes the primarily comic mode in which the following scene will be played. As he turns his back to the camera, Brody and Hendricks walk into shot, the deputy recounting the tail end of the previous night's failed attempt to catch the shark. It's indicative of the way a small community thrives on gossip that the story is already being passed around by word of mouth. Hendricks frames the incident as a humorous anecdote, which Brody rejects with a line ('That's not funny. That's not funny at all.') that echoes Mrs Taft's reaction to the cash or cheque gag in the town hall meeting.

Don't Look Back

There is a brief shot of the inner tube floating placidly on inky blue water before it twitches twice to show that the bait has been taken. There is a cut to a low angle shot of the two fishermen on the dock, the fatter one seated to the left of the frame on one of the jetty's pilings whilst the other stands on the right with his back to the camera. The two men are whistling Shall We Gather At the River? - a hymn often (though not exclusively) associated with funerals in the Westerns of John Ford, and most likely chosen as a tip of the hat to the great director. Spielberg would reference Ford's The Quiet Man in E.T. and has adopted his painterly use of sunsets in the Indiana Jones movies and, more recently, in War Horse. Spielberg also likes to tell the anecdote of how he took (or perhaps, tore) a page out of Ford's book when he dropped a big fight scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark to get back on shooting schedule.

Another shot of the inner tube being pulled through the water away from the screen by the unseen shark is accompanied by the throbbing cello music, and then there is a cut to the coiled chain on the jetty suddenly beginning to play out. A similar image of rapidly unravelling rope will be used on board the Orca when the shark is harpooned with both the second and third barrels. The camera whips up from a close-up of the unspooling chain to the reaction of the seated fisherman. There is a cut to a wider shot of the two men on the jetty. The one in the pork pie hat walks to the end of the pier and (rather like the bather who witnessed the attack on Alex Kintner) points out to the ocean. There is a cut to another shot of the inner tube being pulled through the water, but this time the movement is across the screen from left to right, matching the choreography of the men in the previous shot. Another cut shows the chain tightening around the piling and there are two different angled shots of the jetty being pulled apart under the strain.

There is a shot of the fisherman being dragged out to sea on part of the collapsed pier, and then a cut to an ominous-looking section of the jetty wallowing in the ocean; with two pilings still intact, it has the appearance of a horned devil. The next partially submerged shot is of the fisherman panting as he swims back to the shore. The water seems to lap up against the camera lens although, in fact, the camera was protected inside a specially constructed glass-fronted box. There is a cut back to the 'horned' jetty as it turns slowly in the water accompanied by an almostly ghostly groan of creaking wood and an increased tempo in the music. The movement of the inanimate object together with the Pavlovian cello theme conspire to trick the audience into thinking that the shark has turned back to claim another victim. The other fisherman standing on the remains of the jetty is of the same opinion and he urges his friend on with the worst possible advice ('Charlie, take my word for it, don't look back.'). There's another shot of the 'horned' jetty moving towards the shore and gaining on the hapless swimmer, and then a series of close-ups of the man's struggling hands and feet as he desperately tries to scramble up the slippery boards of the broken pier. Just as he is hauled out of the water, there is a cut to the threatening jetty in the water and then a low angled shot as the wood bumps harmlessly up against the shore and the music concludes with a diminuendo.

In keeping with the improvisational nature of the script, it was not decided how the scene would eventually play out until it was shot; much in the same way that Ingrid Bergman didn't know if she was going to end up with Humphrey Bogart or Paul Henreid during the shooting of Casablanca. The 'will-he-or-won't-he-be-eaten' nature of the scene was repeated in the water-kite sequence in Jaws 2 although in that movie it was given a twist by taking place in bright sunshine.

It's Just Like Pictures In A Book, Danny

The next scene - a wordless 'montage' of scary photos of sharks and grisly pictures of their victims - takes just under forty seconds of screen time, and is made up of twenty different shots. The first image is of a shark with blood flowing from its jaws as it chews at a carcass.We immediately recognise it as a photograph from a book and so make the assumption that it is Brody who is looking at it. Indeed, in this scene the audience literally looks through the protagonist's eyes, seeing exactly what he sees. The page of the book turns to another image of a shark: an extreme close up of a torpedo-nosed fish with the black 'doll's eyes' that Quint will later describe. A number of pages flick before our eyes, too quickly for us to register anything but text and some line drawings before there is a close up of Brody's head, his eyes looking down on the pages that are reflected in his glasses. The blurred background behind him shows a view out of a window, which is suspiciously light compared to the previous jetty scene, and seems to be composed of green lawn and white picket fences.

The next picture is a black and white image of a skinny man kneeling over the corpse of a massive shark. The camera pans down to show a set of frighteningly sharp teeth in an upside down grin like that of the Cheshire cat. There is another shot of flicking pages and another close up of Brody's face showing a kind of horrified fascination. The next picture shows a female diver in a yellow wet suit with a mask and snorkel, swimming alongside a ferocious looking shark, one of her hands on its sand papery flank. The water is as black as ink. There is a turn of the page and another close up of a shark just below the surface of the water, seemingly in the act of lunging at the person who took the photograph. Another close up of the flicking pages reflected in Brody's glasses, and then - in a Chekov's Gun moment - comes a shot of a shark with an aqualung in its jaws. Was it this image that actually provided Spielberg with the inspiration for his explosive conclusion? Another turn of the page and the next picture shows a shark spotter on a high tower looking out over a populated beach, a position Brody will assume in the movie's sequel. The camera lingers on the image, panning up the telephone pole-like structure to show the lifeguard leaning nonchalantly at his post next to an old-fashioned bell for sounding the alarm.

The page turns again to show a shark attacking a carcass in a cloud of blood, not unlike the one that fills the screen at the end of the movie. Another close up of Brody and then a shot of pages of text being turned until he stops on a black and white photograph of six men posing inside a museum exhibit of a giant set of shark's jaws. More pages being turned before the sudden shock of a livid colour photo of a shark attack victim: on the left hand page is a picture of a bloody torso, which looks more like an uncooked holiday roast than a man; on the right there is a picture of what one assumes is the same victim after reconstructive surgery. Brody winces at the sight of the image and there is a cut to the right hand side as the camera pans down to show another disfigured torso. There is one more final shot of flicking pages and a close up of Brody's face before the final and most gruesome image is revealed: the raised leg of a man with a huge chunk of his thigh missing and his flesh hanging down in tatters.

The music (harp, piano and strings and a plaintive horn) that plays under the scene adds a spooky atmosphere.The scene itself is a standard horror movie trope where the hero does some research, often in a library conveniently stocked with books on the very subject he is interested in. A particularly ham-fisted example of this trope can be seen in Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark (2010). The pictures Brody looks at are all real and, although we get the impression that he is flicking through a single volume, the images were culled from various sources, including the National Geographic magazine, which is why it gets a name check in the end credits.

Hook

The next scene of the two locals trying to catch the shark with a hook and chain under cover of darkness is split into two sections: their brief preparations as they set their bait, and what happens when they catch the shark. The first section begins with an establishing shot of a rowing boat moving through the water towards a pier. It's natural to assume that this is the same wooden jetty Michael Brody's boat was tied up to in the previous scene, but a brief exchange of dialogue between the two men in the boat informs us that 'the chief lives on the other side of the island.' One of the men seems concerned about the legality of their actions ('Let's stop before someone reports us'), but, unless they're trespassing (which is hard to do on an ocean) then it's difficult to see how they are breaking the law. As they draw closer to the jetty there is a fade (not a cut) to a closer shot of the boat (which resembles the one Ellen saw in the book illustration) and we see them through one of the fisherman's nets that have been hung out on the shore to dry. It's a visual shorthand for telling us that these two bumbling bounty hunters are going to get caught in their own trap.

There is a cut to the boards of the jetty as a length of coiled chain lands on it and a hand reaches out to attach one end to a large butcher's hook. Another cut shows a marbled hunk of raw meat, which one of the men obligingly identifies as his wife's holiday roast as he pierces it with the hook. Another cut shows him wrapping the chain around one of the jetty's upright posts, and then there is a cut to a low angle shot from the sea, showing both men on the jetty, faintly illuminated by a bare light bulb, with a grey sky above them, and in the background along the shore some ocean front properties, their windows all dark. The man in the checked shirt and pork pie hat stands at the end of the jetty and throws the bait, which is attached to an inflated inner tube tyre, into the sea. As he works, he whistles tunelessly to himself. The man in the baseball cap takes a step nearer the edge, and the two men watch as the tide takes the bait out, a fact that one of them comments on more for the benefit of the audience that his companion.

The task of rowing to the jetty and setting the bait would in reality take maybe half an hour. By giving the audience just a few snippets of visual information (the boat on the water, the jetty, the chain, the hook, and the meat) Spielberg tells us everything we need to know in only fifty seconds of screen time. The same montage  technique is used when the shark cage is assembled on the Orca although then music is used to underscore the heroic nature of Hooper's decision to get into the water.