Week 14 - Famous classic film in thriller genre analysis

Jaws (1975)

Jaws (1975) is a famous classic film in thriller and adventure genre. It is directed by Steven Spielberg under Universal pictures production. The storyline is about a summer on Amity island, where its main business is its beaches. When Brody discovers the remains of a shark attack victim, he tries to close the beaches to swimmers, which offenses with Mayor Larry Vaughn and local businessmen. After a boy is killed by the predator, his mother puts out a bounty on the shark, which brings attentions to amateur hunters and fisherman. Quint, a local fisherman with many experiences offers to hunt the shark down. Soon Quint, Brody and Matt Hooper from the Oceanographic Institute are at sea hunting the Great White shark.

Lacey’s Repertoire of Elements Analysis Grid

Setting

The main settings of the film are dived into 2 places, on the island and in the sea. The island is the secured place, while the sea is the dangerous place as it’s the place with limited resources and hard to survive, because it’s lack of places to run and lack of gadgets for surviving. This creates both safe and really intense situations for the characters. The beach is also an important setting as it’s a common place to hang out. Thrilling the audiences out in a daily-life situation is one of the most effective way to make the scenes in the movie remarkable.

Characters

Here are the main characters of the story

Martin Brody - the main protagonist

He is the chief of police of Amity island and is quite ignorant to island life, however, after the incident that a kid was killed by the shark, he regrets and tries to be responsible by hiring Quint and take Hooper with him to hunt the shark down.

This character has shown a great character development in this protagonist. Normally, in thriller film, the protagonist is usually the most dedicated person from the start, while this film shows how the most coward character become the one who can beat the shark. This creates a strong feeling toward the character in the audiences.

Matt Hooper - sub protagonist

He is a young oceanographer who bond over a shared repugnance toward Amity island Mayor, Larry Vaughn, for being irresponsible to the shark incident.

Captain Quint - sub protagonist

He is the owner if the charter fishing boat who Brody hires to take him and Hooper on a shark hunting expedition

These 2 sub-protagonists are quite common in thriller films as the strong men who can help in both physical and mental issues.

Other than the main protagonist and other characters that help him, like other thriller films, women and kids are always the innocent victim. As there are no presence of women in the protagonist group, this film still stereotyped women as the weak that need other protectors.

For the antagonist, this character is what makes the film feel more intense than other thriller-action films. Unlike using murderer or criminals, using a shark as the predator can create greater fear to the audiences, because it’s more terrifying and is harder to win. Also, within that era, it is one of the first thriller films that use creatures as antagonist, which is why it gets lots of attentions.

Narrative events

The narrative events are in linear narrative, which means there’s no time skipping or swapping events. The film has the narrative style of last man standing, which is to create and power the intensity up from slowly killing each character out until it becomes 1 to 1 fight. This creates a hard tension between life and death.

The structure of the narration doesn’t focus on the group of survivors at the start, but after the middle of the story, it’s strongly focused on the protagonist’s group to the climax.

Iconography

Similar to other thriller films, weapons like guns are also included for fighting the shark. There are also extra gadgets like boat, ropes, and other aqua tools to support the characters and the setting. Silhouette of the antagonist are also shown, but not as its shadow. It’s used in the form of the appearance of the shark’s fin above the sea surface. Some scenes are shot over the shoulder or the crowd to show the victim at the back, adding more dangerous approach of the shark. Blood is also shown a lot when the attack happened to show pain of the victims.

Style

The scenes are often in high contrasts and unsaturated (except the colour of the blood), which is to keep the movie in tension and somber. The camera techniques like shot from point of view of the predator makes audiences feel like it can really approach them. This film also using a new technique of zooming into the face with the background moving wider, which gives more intensity to the character’s facial expressions. The soundtrack of the film also becomes iconic because it is played during the attack of the shark.

Conclusion

As this film is in classic period, there are still stereotypes in genders and ages. It contains lots of generic iconography and classic techniques in thrilling, however, as a film in that period, presenting of creatures and use sea as the setting is quite new and unique. The reason that it can thrill the audiences really well is that they have a good use of camera techniques (point of view, close shot, etc.) and the narration that shows character development, which makes the audiences feels attach to the movie.