Chief Brody, the reluctant hero of Amity Island, has an awkward but endearing demeanour. The handheld camera introduces him to the audience as he gets out of bed.
He's scared of the ocean but lives on an island. He sports a towel over his shoulder inside his jacket. There's the odd skip in his walk as he heads to the store. He knocks over the paintbrushes once there.
His glasses don't sit right on his face. As the shark book pages reflect in his specs, Steven Spielberg creates foreshadowing with an air tank in a shark's mouth. He smokes around Chrissie's remains. He wears a life jacket on Hooper's expensive boat. He clumsily knocks his head on a light in the Orca, on a sign in the the town hall (and again on a lamp in in his home in Jaws 2). This relatable clumsiness endears him to the audience.
Brody allows himself to be bullied. With his garish suit jacket and lapels, Vaughn and his heavies surround Brody as he's ferried to the Scouts swimming. He even patronises him for this being his "first summer" on the island.
The powerhouse performances behind Brody, Quint, Hooper and Vaughn show them as complex characters. They each have separate fears, motivations and backstories. There's a power struggle between man and shark and between these three men. They all clash.
The islanders also fight to be seen and heard. They crowd Hooper when he suggests (correctly) that they've caught the wrong shark. One of the many remarkable things about this film is that most were either bit-part, local actors or not actors at all.
Quint, Hooper, and Vaughn are arrogant and confident, unlike Brody. Quint laughs at the "bozos" who catch the tiger shark from afar on his Orca. Without even inspecting the shark, Quint knows it's a shark, not the shark.
And who else, bar Matt Hooper, would take someone's dinner while he hasn't even finished asking if anyone's eating it? No one could rock double denim with a tie quite like him. He's not too bothered about getting his hands dirty. Said tie gets drenched with the insides of a shark's gut.
As soon as Chrissie Watkins is killed, Brody isn't interested in the mundane goings-on of the island. He doesn't care about the truck parked in front of the store, bad-hat Harry's broken fence or "cats barking" in front of Mr Taft's house.
Who knew cats could bark or that Alex's pruned fingers would be cause for concern? Moments later, Mrs Kitner has a more permanent problem than when the shark takes his second victim — her son. Watch out for the running theme of yellow: Alex's inflatable, his mum's hat, Quint's barrels and more. Deliberate from Speilberg.
Brody seems sick of people goading him about being scared of the water. He gets narky with Harry and abruptly cuts off his wife when she mentions it. Watch out for when he's rushing people out of the water after the shark attacks Alex. His toes touch the water. He doesn't like it and pulls back.
The internet is full of comments about Mrs Kitner being too old to have an 8-year-old boy and that she looks more like his grandmother. But Lee Fierro was 45 at the time of filming, which would've made her 37 when she gave birth. Nothing now. But probably "left on the shelf" in the mid-70s.
She scolds Brody for being responsible for her son's death. Vaugn claims she's wrong. Brody claims she's right. She was right. Brody allowed himself to be intimidated. Vaughn even allows his thirst for money and intimidation techniques to take over and bully a family into the water when "no one's going in". A herd mentality takes place when everyone follows them. Vaughn doesn't care that he's potentially serving them up as shark food.
Only after the fourth victim does Brody take a stand against the bullies. He stares into the water while his son is passed out from shock on the beach.
Only when Quint and Hooper fix the Orca's engine on calm water does the audience get some respite from the non-stop intensity. Robert Shaw was a master at playing the "certifiable", as seen in From Russia with Love (1963).
Quint burns out his boat despite protests from Hooper, which leaves the three men flooded and stranded. You can see his certifiability in his eyes as he intensely stares at the shark heading for him after Roy Scheider's famous ab-libbed line. If you want more evidence of Scheider's prowess and screen presence, look no further than Sorcerer (1977).
In the end, Hooper is partly responsible for Quint's death when his oxygen tank crushes his hand, and he slides down the deck to his death.
No thoughts on this masterpiece would be complete without mentioning John Williams. It's wild how this film improves with each viewing, even if you're well into triple viewing figures.
It's the perfect film. The only jarring thing is that some of the supporting cast are dressed for winter in July. But it does get nippy at Martha's Vineyard — even in the summer.
Queue Jaws 2: a solid sequel and a masterful, early teen slasher. It's not as good as Jaws, but which film is?
Copyright © 2025 J W Emery Ltd. All rights reserved.
