Film Paper Series: Form and Meaning in Jaws (1975)

Form and Meaning in Jaws (1975)

Many films are produced with specific goals in mind regarding how the film’s director would like to affect the intended audience. More often than not, a narrative film seeks to cause a certain emotional reaction in the viewer. It follows reason that the stronger the emotional reaction, the more exciting and, therefore, the more interesting the film. Whether a film director wants to attract more paying customers or hit that much harder on a hot-button issue, the ultimate goal is to make the audience feel more strongly the target emotions expressed by the film. More specifically, it is the emotional swing (from one extreme to the other) that hits more effectively since creating a simple emotion is fairly easy. The method one uses to control the viewer’s emotions does vary, and since the early 1900’s, film scholars have developed two of the more popular schools of thought on the subject: a focus on editing and a focus on the mise-en-scene. These two schools, or paradigms governing how one could approach the twisting of emotions, each have radically different ideals and are both employed by Steven Spielberg in his blockbuster Jaws. The idea here, in this paper, is to address both of these paradigms in order to arrive at a better understanding of how Spielberg affected, on his audience, an emotional swing from sympathy and security to anxiety and terror.

One scene from Jaws in particular can act as a microcosm of the methods used in the entire film because it offers a blend of montage editing and careful attention to the mise-en-scene. The scene begins with an establishing shot of a large boat in complete darkness with a bright searchlight emanating out into the ocean. Chief Brody and Matt Hooper are the sole occupants of the boat and are out hunting for the infamous killer shark. Earlier that day, some amateur hunters from Amity captured a shark, which they believed to be responsible for all of the terror the small town had experienced recently. Hooper strongly believes, citing scientific evidence, that the captured shark was not responsible for the killings, thus he and Chief Brody have taken it upon themselves to venture out into the night to look for the real killer.

It is obvious from the beginning of the scene that the search initiative lies in Mr. Hooper’s hands because Brody is shown in the first shot of the scene to be rambling drunkenly. He was convinced by Hooper in the previous scene to go out on the water, something he hates to do. On the boat the audience views him from on high through a camera angled down at him while he slurs about “making a difference in Amity”. He stumbles around the deck while the camera pans to follow him and his wine bottle, instead of cutting to new angles, in order to emphasize the stumbling. The cumulative effect is that Brody is in a very powerless position. Spielberg contrasts this feeling of powerlessness by cutting immediately to Hooper as he dismisses Brody’s ramblings and offers him a pretzel. The medium close up of Hooper is shown through an upward angled camera so the Hooper is above Brody. There is a strong feeling that Hooper is in complete control, both over Brody and, by extension, over the safety of the audience. Hooper knows what he is doing and as long as he sits at the helm, Brody (the audience) is safe from any underwater creature. The director decides to underline this feeling with the long take aesthetic instead of a rigorous shot/reverse shot method as he films the ensuing, and information rich, conversation that follows. Film scholar André Bazin would have loved this approach because he believes that, “The camera cannot see everything at once, but it makes sure not to lose any part of what it chooses to see.”(Film p.44) Spielberg understands that the conversation, taking place at the helm, is far more important than anything happening around the boat, and he wants to make sure that the audience does not lose any part of what the camera is seeing. After Brody climbs up to the pilot’s level of the boat to join Hooper, the conversation is shot in a single take at a medium distance. The conversation covers why Hooper is able to have so many high-tech gadgets on a boat and the reason is because he is a wealthy man from a wealthy family. The conversation takes about 30 seconds, quite a long time for a single take in an action/suspense film. Throughout the conversation Brody learns that Hooper is simple a rich man who loves to devote his time and resources to his fascination with sharks. We learn that he’s not being paid to chase sharks; he does it because he loves it. These qualities in Hooper reinforce the idea that he is competent and reliable and will not let anything happen to Brody, reassuring the audience that he (they) are safe from any scary sharks at the moment. There is a recurring theme that sutures the audience’s feelings with Brody because they are being “led” through the same psychological rigors that he is. Brody is no shark expert and is terrified of the sea, so it is up to Hooper to make him (us) feel safe. Hooper isn’t even wearing a life vest in this part of the scene while Brody is. He is clearly the expert while Brody is the vulnerable character.

It is important to mention, as a side note, the use of sound during this scene. In previous scenes, when the director wanted to put a feeling of unease out into the audience, it was usually accompanied with ominous music in the background. The absence of that music, along with the constant sounds coming from the boat’s engine, is an indicator that no one is about to be eaten. The idea of the boat’s engine being reassuring may be a stretch, but can be related psychologically to the universal fear of the dark. When we think back to childhood, the scariest part of sleeping in the dark was most likely the silence. This effect was easily negated by a large ceiling fan, perhaps, that provided a background noise to ease away the random creaking of a house for example. The sound of the engine in the background is no mistake and it serves a purpose here of adding to the feeling of safety that Spielberg conveys through his actors and his set.

The end of Brody and Hooper’s conversation marks a third of the way through the scene under analysis. Spielberg has done a wonderful job heretofore of making the audience, sympathetic with Chief Brody, feel completely at ease. The lack of ominous music as well as the continuous chugging of Hooper’s boat has had a reassuring effect as well. That is all about to change as Hooper’s aptly named instrument “the fishfinder” starts beeping. A quick check by Hooper confirms his suspicion as he says, “There’s something else out there.” Cue close ups, montage editing and the ominous music. It would seem, at this point in the scene, that Spielberg decided he did not like the ideas of Bazin anymore (as have many other in various periods of the last few decades) and taken up the beliefs of scholars Vsevolod Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein, the former having written: “The compulsory and deliberate guidance of the thoughts and associations of the spectator is editing.”(Film p.10) Indeed the director picks up the frequency of cuts and zooms in on important features within the scene to guide the audience’s emotions through the more action packed part of the scene. More specifically, the rate of cutting before Hooper’s line about “something being out there” was doubled in the action afterward. A blunt mathematical analysis can still offer important information about the pace of the scene. As Hooper acknowledges the presence of something in the water and the ominous music begins, so stops the reassuring presence of the engine chugging. The first close-up of the two characters together begins the change in editing technique. They are framed with nothing but blackness in the background, completely alone. Brody and Hooper are now floating in the middle of the sea, having found a deserted fishing boat, and the silence within the diegesis emphasizes their lonliness, while the music they cannot hear makes the audience start to cringe for the unexpected.

Spielberg also begins to cut from inside the boundaries of the boat to a long distance away to show the searchlight scanning the water. The viewer’s eyes are directed to the location of the spotlight so that they are searching along with the characters. The act of searching is a way to begin the process of building tension. There are even a few titillating details, like a floating barrel, to increase the anxiety to find what the characters are looking for. After finally locating the deserted fishing boat, there are several cuts that depict Hooper’s boat in the background with the apparently damaged boat in the foreground. This arrangement gives the searchlight the opportunity to shine in the audience’s eyes rather brightly. Frustrating the audience was the obvious design of the camera placement because we could just as easily have looked on the new boat from the character’s point of view. As if to relieve this frustration, Spielberg cuts to a view of the fishing boat from Hooper’s boat, but Hooper is standing right in front of the camera! Placing a character in between the viewer and the object of interest was, again, no accident and a recurring theme (leit motif) that Spielberg employed in the whole film to affect a surge of frustration in a given scene.

If the feeling of security amongst the audience was not getting shaky by this point, it was certainly erased when the realization hits that Hooper is going out into the water. In a bit of foreshadowing, the audience gets another view from the abandoned boat with the searchlight focused on an obvious bite mark on the hull. We now know that the shark has definitely attacked the boat and even eaten part of it. As Hooper dons his underwater gear, the cut frequency increases even more as he plunges into the dark water. It is in a curious fashion that the underwater segment of the scene is shown. The audience does not take on Hooper’s point of view, but gazes upon him from several feet away. This is probably because the director wants the audience to be free to look out into the dark water and expect the worst. The worst happens as Hooper finds what he is looking for: A hole bitten out of the side of the boat with a shark’s tooth lodged in. As Hooper examines the tooth the audience gets another opportunity to examine the black abyss behind him before he looks again at the hole. With our attention temporarily off of the shark and looking along with Hooper for another tooth or similar clue, Spielberg abandons subtlety altogether. Unexpectedly, a dead body floats into view accompanied by a shrieking high-pitched sound designed to strike the terror that Hooper is feeling directly into our hearts. So ends the scene.

By the end of the scene, Steven Spielberg has taken his audience from one emotional extreme to the other. He built up our faith in the expertise of Mr. Hooper and our security in the safety of both him and Chief Brody. As Hooper emerges from the water gasping for air, even with the absence of the actual shark, our security is shattered and we fear for both of their lives. It was the clever combination of long takes in the beginning and quick cuts in the end that swung our emotions from one side to the other in order to hammer in the idea that this shark is dangerous and we should all be afraid of it.

Source:

Bazin, André, and Vsevolod Pudovkin. "What Is Cinema?" Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. 41-53. Print.