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.