It is the shark
spotter with the white sun visor who first raises the alarm. (“Jesus Christ!
Fin! Shark! Three five zero!”) Behind him on the boat are three other men, two
with binoculars looking to the port and to the starboard and one resting the
butt of his rifle on his hip. The camera pans swiftly right to left as one of
the men races to the bow of the boat and point his glasses in the direction
indicated. In the background we can see Hooper’s boat and there is a cut to a
brief shot of him giving orders on the walkie talkie (“Red one! Red one!
Martin! Get the people out of the water!).
The shot places
Hooper behind the raised windscreen of the boat, with part of the steel frame
bisecting the screen almost diagonally. It’s another example of the film’s
visual motif of fences and barriers, and could also be seen as a foreshadowing
of Hooper’s confrontation with the shark when he will be enclosed in the shark
cage. There is a cut to a shot of Brody in front of the bandstand as he turns
and looks towards the sea as the radio crackles in his hand.We then get a view
of the ocean from the vantage point of one of the raised lifeguard stations,
and there is a cut to a close up of the lifeguard rising up into the frame, his
hands cupped around his mouth to amplify the sound of the whistle he is blowing
on. Behind him we can see a number of sunbathers sprawled on the sand and
dozing in the sun. The next brief shot shows a group of fully clothed tourists
seated all in a row like movie goers. As one, they raise their own binoculars
to get a better view of the carnage to come.
Brody races to the
foot of the lifeguard station in an attempt to contain the situation, trying
the stop the shrill whistling – the very sound that signalled the beginning of
the shark problem when Hendricks found the remains of the first victim on the
beach. Brody’s pleas are in vain and he becomes just another helpless observer.
After we get a shot from ground level of the lifeguard issuing commands through
a megaphone, there is a medium shot of Brody looking in despair to the right of
the frame. He then takes a step towards the camera, as if about to make a
decision, but then just stops and stares.
The next shot –
which we can assume is from Brody’s point of view – is of people swimming
directly towards the camera, whilst in the background the boats are gathering
to form a barrier. There follows a series of shots of bathers scrambling for
the safety of shore.With the exception of the elderly selectman’s wife, who
we see in close up, those in jeopardy remain anonymous. The camera picks out a
few individuals – a child on a yellow raft crying as swimmers plough past him;
a man who (in a typical disaster movie trope) pushes two children off a raft to
commandeer it and save himself; a woman clutching a child protectively to her
chest and screaming; an old man trampled in the surf – but the audience has no
real investment in their survival. The panic on the fourth of July is a scene
of mass rout.
The concept of group
jeopardy was integral to the disaster film and it determined the episodic
narrative nature of the genre. Typically, multiple characters would be
established in the first act (before the disaster struck) and their developing storylines
would alternate in between action set pieces. Along the way some would
persevere and some would perish, each character’s chances of survival being
inextricably linked to the actor’s status on the call sheet. The casting of
well known faces (be they movie stars, character actors, old time Hollywood
legends, or TV stalwarts) meant that it was easy for the audience to recognise
the characters amidst the mayhem. Had Jaws
adopted the disaster movie template then Amity’s beaches might have been
populated with the likes of George Kennedy, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowall and
Ava Gardner. Benchley’s novel contained enough soap-opera plot themes (infidelity, blackmail, alcoholism) that could easily have been worked up into
multiple storylines, but, in fact, it was this Peyton Place
element of the source material that Spielberg rejected from the beginning.
