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.