Jaws- a great movie, though I'm pretty sure Georgi will dismiss it as a reamark from a spielberg fan.
If you didn't know this, the movie was the first to cross the 100 million dollar line, and started the term 'Summer Blockbuster'.
It is really Spielberg's first clame to fame, since his first movie(Sugarlad Express) wasn't especialy well accepted.
From this he got the budget for 'Close Encounters' which eventualy led to Raiders and ET.
The DVD has one of the best making of documentries I've ever seen. It has interviews with Spielberg, the producers, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy scheider, the actors, plus the set designer, cinematographer and, the finale, John Williams! (which was a big reason for me getting the DVD)
One amusing anecdote, is that once the boat started to sink, in real life, as the actors, cameraman and sound guys were on it. The producers and Spielberg were yelling "get the actor off!" So the sound guys went "**** the actors! save the sound department!"
The Documentry is great at balancing out the amount of info and
entertainment. It's both Interesting, and funny at the same time.
Although anti Spielberg people will not like all of the praise he gets.
The movie itself is really effective at getting the message to the audience.
As is said in the documentry, I believe that the music was, besides great melodicly, the most important effect in the movie.
As Spielberg said: 'I think the score was clearly responsible for half the success of the movie'
The music is in preperation stages for the first hour of the movie, then it really scares you. What I mean is, the movie makes it clear at the start that everytime a shark is near, you'll hear the tune.
Than it tests you by giving you a scene where you think you see a shark, but there's no music, so you say to yourself 'I guess the music has nothing to do with it', but then you find out that the shark is really a couple of pranksters, so your faith in the music is multiplied, as it didn't mislead you.
Then again, everytime the shark is near- the music plays. so when at the end sequence the shark apears from nowhere without the music, it terrifies you, as you thought you'd have some warning.
Another thing about the score, is that it always cheers you up when you need it the most. In the last hour, when they're on the fishing boat, in between the sharks apearences the you start to get bummed out, as you know he'll be back, but the music always keeps a fighting theme going, it sounds like there preparing for war, so you get into it and excited again.
Anyway, the score is great, probably the most effective one, with the exception of the imperial march, and it is certainly well deserving of it's oscar.
I read that originaly Lee Marvin was offered the part of Quint, and that after he turned it down, it was offered to Sterling Hayden, who couldn't do it, so it finaly got to Robert Shaw.
I can just imagine how perfect Marvin and Hayden would be as the grumpy sailor, but Shaw was the best.
Movie rating:
9/10
Score rating:
10/10
DVD rating:
8/10
