FeedJaws
June 19 2009, 7:00pm
I've seen it a half-dozen times, at least . . . but had I ever seen a decent 35mm print on the big screen before? I'm honestly not sure.
Either way, it had been long enough that while I wasn't exactly approaching it with fresh eyes -- I mean, I know it well enough that there's precious little "suspense" left to mine, although I (along with everyone else in the theater) jumped & yelped when the drowned man appears through the hole in the bottom of the swamped boat -- I did feel like I was seeing new things in it.
Things, as it turned out, that had less to do with the plotting, or the suspense, and more to do with the loose, verite-style shooting of a lot of the holiday-weekend crowd scenes (this kind of shooting, coupled with tight, savvy editing, is more or less what I think of when I think of early-mid-70s American cinema). I was also really interested in the sound editing, specifically how much of the dialogue was intentionally inaudible because they had two competing conversations mixed at the same level, or two characters talking over each other without pause. All this effort going into heightening the naturalism, to try to get you to forget the reason you're there, so that the scare moments are more powerful.
Contrast that with the horror of just a few years earlier -- The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby -- which were much more an exercise in synergy, every element working together to CREEP YOU OUT.
The first 80% of Jaws are very nearly perfect, so by the time you get to the last 20% -- which is, after all, still just an epic battle with a large rubber shark -- you're invested enough that you can *almost* overlook the Eastwoodian corniness of a line like "Smile, you sonofabitch!" Almost.
Either way, it had been long enough that while I wasn't exactly approaching it with fresh eyes -- I mean, I know it well enough that there's precious little "suspense" left to mine, although I (along with everyone else in the theater) jumped & yelped when the drowned man appears through the hole in the bottom of the swamped boat -- I did feel like I was seeing new things in it.
Things, as it turned out, that had less to do with the plotting, or the suspense, and more to do with the loose, verite-style shooting of a lot of the holiday-weekend crowd scenes (this kind of shooting, coupled with tight, savvy editing, is more or less what I think of when I think of early-mid-70s American cinema). I was also really interested in the sound editing, specifically how much of the dialogue was intentionally inaudible because they had two competing conversations mixed at the same level, or two characters talking over each other without pause. All this effort going into heightening the naturalism, to try to get you to forget the reason you're there, so that the scare moments are more powerful.
Contrast that with the horror of just a few years earlier -- The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby -- which were much more an exercise in synergy, every element working together to CREEP YOU OUT.
The first 80% of Jaws are very nearly perfect, so by the time you get to the last 20% -- which is, after all, still just an epic battle with a large rubber shark -- you're invested enough that you can *almost* overlook the Eastwoodian corniness of a line like "Smile, you sonofabitch!" Almost.
