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.