When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.
- Won 3 Oscars
- 16 wins & 20 nominations total
- Hendricks
- (as Jeffrey C. Kramer)
- Medical Examiner
- (as Dr. Robert Nevin)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaSeveral decades after the film's release, Lee Fierro walked into a seafood restaurant and noticed an "Alex Kintner Sandwich" on the menu. She commented that she had played his mother many years ago. Jeffrey Voorhees, owner of the restaurant, ran out to meet her. He had played her son, and they hadn't seen each other since the original movie shoot.
- GoofsGreat White Sharks cannot move backwards once their gills are under water, as seen towards the end of the film.
- Quotes
[the three men are comparing their scars]
Brody: What's that one?
Quint: What?
Brody: That one, there, on your arm.
Quint: Oh, uh, that's a tattoo, I got that removed.
Hooper: Don't tell me, don't tell me..."Mother."
[he roars with laughter]
Hooper: What is it...
[Quint solemnly clamps a hand on Hooper's arm]
Quint: Mr. Hooper, that's the USS Indianapolis.
[Hooper immediately stops laughing]
Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis?
Brody: What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Heh.
[he pauses and takes a drink]
Quint: They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. Y'know, it's... kinda like ol' squares in a battle like, uh, you see in a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin', and sometimes the shark'd go away... sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. Y'know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... until he bites ya. And those black eyes roll over white, and then... oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin', the ocean turns red, and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces.
[he pauses]
Quint: Y'know, by the end of that first dawn... lost a hundred men. I dunno how many sharks. Maybe a thousand. I dunno how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland- baseball player, boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up... bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. Young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and come in low and three hours later, a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. Y'know, that was the time I was most frightened, waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred sixteen men come out, and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
[he pauses, smiles, and raises his glass]
Quint: Anyway... we delivered the bomb.
- Crazy creditsThe three leads are credited using a placement that was popular in the 1970s, making it unclear who receives first credit. Robert Shaw's name is vertically above Roy Scheider's, but Scheider's is to the left. Richard Dreyfuss, being the least experienced, is last whichever way you read it.
- Alternate versionsThe version shown in recent years on television (as of 2005) includes a lengthier scene where the crazed fishermen hunt sharks to collect Mrs. Kinter's reward. It shows them crazily firing rifles into the water, much like a shark feeding frenzy. The extended version of Jaws was actually shown on TV back in the 1980s, at least occasionally, in order to achieve a running time of 3 hours including commercial interruptions. The shark hunting frenzy mentioned here, in addition to Matt Hooper telling a story about an ex-lover to Chief Brody on their way to dissect the tiger shark, as well as Quint's badgering of a young musician in a bait and tackle store were all included in many syndicated television broadcasts long before "Deleted Scenes" were ever part of home video packaging.
- ConnectionsEdited from Inner Space: Man Eater (1973)
The hunting of the shark means something different for each of the three main male leads. For Brody, killing the shark would mean ensuring the safety of his children (the relationship between parents and their children being a strong running theme in nearly all of Spielberg's films). For Hooper, the shark is just another shark. It's his job to study them and provide his expertise. That's it. Then there's Quint, a Captain Ahab like figure whose obsession places him in a fit of blind fury. To him, all sharks are the same and killing this one would operate as ultimate revenge.
And like Moby Dick, Jaws is a perfectly told straightforward story depicting believable human beings and observing human behavior. Part of the joy of Jaws is watching these characters interact with each other in ways that make them seem truly alive and real, which only serves to make the threat of the shark even more threatening. We also have the land scenes of the first half that expose the stakes at the same time as it depicts the conflict between Brody and the mayor who wants to keep the beach open.
And of course, the film is marvelously constructed by Spielberg. Much is made of the way he directs the scenes of suspense, but there's also very intelligent decisions being made in non-action scenes. Many shots burned into my eyes are something as simple as a quiet moment between a father and his son who is innocently ignorant of the danger at hand.
- AlsExGal
- Oct 29, 2023
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Stillness in the Water
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $7,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $266,567,580
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $7,061,513
- Jun 22, 1975
- Gross worldwide
- $477,220,580
- Runtime2 hours 4 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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