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.
