Predator

The mayor gives an interview for the TV, directing his gaze to the off-screen reporter, whilst in the background Meadows vainly tries to prevent people from waving and mugging into the camera lens. Vaughn’s statement is succinct and to the point (‘I’m pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers.’) The twin use of adjectives (pleased and happy) and verbs (caught and killed) employs the politician’s favourite technique of repetition to make a point, giving the sentence a persuasive rhythm. And yet the directness of the language in the first half of the sentence is at odds with the equivocal phrasing of the final clause, pointing up the absurdity of the mayor’s position. There is an infintesimal pause before Vaughn pronounces the word predator, as if he is self-censoring himself by avoiding the use of the word shark. The scene was clearly filmed on one of the less sunny days and it’s a happy coincidence of poor continuity that the greyish sky seems to be offering up yet another contradiction as Vaughn insists that ‘it’s a beautiful day.’ Being a politician, the mayor ends the interview with a soundbite (‘Amity, as you know, means friendship.’), which includes a sly meta-reference to the fact that the man holding the microphone is the creator of the fictional community. There are two real life communities called Amity in the state of New York, either of which may have provided Peter Benchley with inspiration. In his novel, he makes no direct reference to the meaning of the name, but the irony was no doubt intended. 

Splash

As Michael Brody and his friends carry the boat along the edge of the pond towards the bridge, little Sean Brody, who has slipped under his mother’s radar, runs after them. There follows a series of shots of bathers (both tourists and locals) filmed from just above the water line, accompanied by a soundtrack of children’s shouts, laughter and vigorous splashing. We then cut to a silent underwater shot, showing the bathers from beneath. Their exposed white limbs scissor and kick as the camera comes in close. This is the first underwater shot of the film that does not represent the POV of the shark, which is something the viewer intuitively grasps due to the absence of any music on the soundtrack. 

A cut to one of the spotter boats shows Hendricks raising a pair of binoculars and reporting a possible sighting (‘Thought I saw a shadow.”) on his walkie-talkie. There is a brief shot of Brody on the beach, somewhat sidelined from the main activity, fiddling with the dials of his own radio, before we cut back to Hendricks from a different angle. The shot frames the deputy on the right of the screen, an expanse of water on the left with the the sun shining on it. He lowers the binoculars and delivers his line (‘False alarm. Must be this glare’) It’s a moment that is lifted directly from the novel, but, with its need for narrative efficiency, the film script reduces half a page of dialogue (page 179 of the Fawcett paperback edition) into two terse lines.

There is a cut to another shot of bathers. The water laps against the bottom half of the screen as the camera tracks from left to right, and whenever it submerges the sound cuts out completely. It’s a deliberately disorientating effect, rather like (though less sustained than) the one achieved by Kubrick in The Shining when Danny rides his tricycle across alternating surfaces of carpet and bare flooring.