Word: sharked
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...There's nothing wise or animal about Robert Shaw's Quint. What you get is the perennial tooth missing, rough and ready sea captain. The only character played to the nines is Richard Dreyfuss's spoiled and reckless kid icthyologist Hooper. While he rarely gasps in awe at the shark's shiny hide. Dreyfuss's terrific comedic talents gives the film exactly what it needs for balance--sparking and believable touches of levity to humanize the nightmare...
...cinematic entertainment Uaws is already overtaking the Godfather in box-office revenues). But its appeal transcends the fright of the victim. The audience can also identify with the aggressor. You don't see the first two attacks from the victim's perspective. You don't even see the shark. What you see is a naked pair of nubile legs fluttering several feet above, or two tiny feet kicking a rubber raft a short distance to the surface. You circle around, sensing your prey, and when you're sure, you rise up at full speed...
Jaws is almost like a latent dream. While the observer may not consciously realize it, the film offers a metaphor for aggression. It plays out violent tendencies willed but suppressed by the spectator. The relief that meets the end of each shark attack does not just come with the certainty of death, it also marks the relaxation following a thorough purge. Sort of like an easy feeling of release you'd get if you told off the bastard who just fired you. Earthquake had a similiar man-on-the street life gamble element to it but it played on violence...
...best-seller as well as most of the character conflicts and shoots for the thrills. The only problem is that character development in the novel not only served to relieve tension, it also offered several different, presumably philosophical perspectives on the beast. Matt Hooper, the icthyologist, sees the shark as a work of almost supernatural beauty. "It's the kind of thing that makes you believe in a god." To Police Chief Brody the shark is an invincible nightmare of violence and guts, a glittering evil intelligence that forces him into the ring to defend the good town of Amity...
Quint, the shark catcher, initially dismisses his partners' charges of divine intelligence or beauty as hogwash. "Don't make him out to be more than he is. He's just a dumb garbage bucket." But as the chase goes on, he finds himself more drawn to the fish, almost hypnotized into the death duel. "Brody saw fever in Quint's face--a heat that lit up his dark eyes, an intensity that drew his lips back from his teeth in a crooked smile, an anticipation that strummed the sinews in his neck and whitened his knuckles." To Quint the fish...