Happy Meal

The shark comes up fast behind the rowboat, advancing on its unsuspecting prey like a pantomime villain. It’s probably nothing more than an ironic coincidence that the boat’s red hull and the yellow rope hanging down its side are the same as McDonald’s corporate colours. The unnamed victim (played by stuntman Ted Grossman) is tipped into the water as the shark rams the boat. 

The next shot shows Michael and his friends being capsized in the same manner. Subsequent shots that indicate the positioning of the two craft make it clear that there is no good reason – other than narrative necessity – why the Sailfish should have overturned. Two brief shots of the man and then Michael Brody surfacing and shaking their heads serve to link them as potential victims. The young boy appears to be looking directly into the camera – just as the earlier shots of bathers seemed to be breaking the fourth wall – but, in fact, the editing of the next two shots would suggest that Michael is directly witnessing the attack. We, however, see this not from his point of view at water level, but from above. As the rower desperately tries to find a purchase on the upturned hull of his boat, we get our first real view of the shark: a pale ghostly image of its snout and open jaws beneath the surface. 

The image seems to fade just as the man is pulled under. The camera then cuts back to Michael Brody’s reaction, his dark eyes and open mouth conveying his terror. A contrasting perspective is provided in the next shot: we view the attack from the shore, where three young bikinied girls are sunbathing, the one closest to the camera inexplicably wearing a light pink sweater. They look towards the source of the screams with casual curiosity. The moment recalls the movie’s opening scene, when the frenzied attack on Chrissie is inter cut with shots of her would-be-date lying in the surf.

Basic Seamanship

Brody’s first reaction to the woman’s warning cries (‘The shark. It’s going into the pond. Shark. In the estuary.’) is a resigned ‘Now what?’ until his wife reminds him about Michael. The camera follows Brody as he moves through the crowd, keeping him in focus as the heads of those he passes remain just a blur. The technique of filming a moving object through a series of static ones – also used in the pursuit along the beach in the movie’s opening scene – here creates a dynamic effect, whilst at the same time suggesting the determination of the character. Brody has no awareness of those around him and his only thought is to save his son – everything else is, literally and figuratively, a blur. The layered sound mix of the woman’s cries, the PA system, the murmur of the crowd and a few accelerating bars of music build to a crescendo on the next cut, which shows little Sean playing on the edge of the pond as the shark’s fin glides silently past. 

The next shot shows Sean and his two buddies bickering on the Sailfish as one of them struggles with a knot. The blocking of the coming attack is established in the composition of the next shot. In the foreground are the three boys on the boat, its stern low in the water. A few yards behind them is a man in a red rowboat. He shouts some advice on basic seamanship to the three inexperienced youngsters, unaware that behind him in the middle distance is a black fin scything its way through the water. On the bridge are a number of static figures who have stopped to watch the drama play out. We then cut back to a shot of the stone causeway that runs along the side of the pond. It’s positioned with Kubrickian precision right in the centre of the frame. 

The figure of Chief Brody runs along it in the direction of the bridge, followed on the beach side by barefoot members of the crowd. Over this scene there plays a savagely propulsive reading of the shark motif. The music for this scene was not selected for the original soundtrack album, but does appear under the title ‘Into the Estuary’ on the Varese Sarabande recording, albeit in a significantly muted interpretation by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Interestingly, up to this point – almost half way through the film – there has only been about thirteen minutes of score. It is in the second hour, once the Orca has put to sea, that John Williams’s contribution really comes to the fore.