- Director
- Writers
- Peter Benchley(screenplay)
- Carl Gottlieb(screenplay)
- Stars
- Director
- Writers
- Peter Benchley(screenplay)
- Carl Gottlieb(screenplay)
- Stars
- Won 3 Oscars
- 15 wins & 20 nominations total
- Hendricks
- (as Jeffrey C. Kramer)
- Medical Examiner
- (as Dr. Robert Nevin)
- Director
- Writers
- Peter Benchley(screenplay) (based on the novel by)
- Carl Gottlieb(screenplay)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaSeveral decades after the film's release, Lee Fierro, who played Mrs. Kintner, walked into a seafood restaurant and noticed that the menu had an "Alex Kintner Sandwich." She commented that she had played his mother so many years ago; the owner of the restaurant ran out to meet her, and he was none other than Jeffrey Voorhees, who had played her son. They had not 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)
Jaws is responsible for many things, it's responsible for propelling director Steven Spielberg's career into the stratosphere, it was responsible for a downturn in the package holiday trade, and it was responsible for shaping the summer blockbuster release practise's. There are many other things which one doesn't need to bore you with, it's just true to say that Jaws is firmly ensconced in movie history, if one hasn't seen it then one surely knows about it, it is, even today, part of popular culture.
But is it any good? Is it worthy of a long standing reputation as one of the greatest monster movies of all time? Hell yes it is, one or two easily overlooked flaws aside, it busted the box office {world wide} and tapped into a primal fear that resides in the majority of mankind, the unseen that resides in the sea.
Jaws sets out its marker right from the start with a truly shocking and attention grabbing opening sequence, from then on in Spielberg {learning from Hitchcock for sure} tweaks the tension to have the audience living on their nerves, even as character building {by way of Brody's family arc} sedates the pace, we just know that it's all relative to an extension of fear and terror that is around the next corner. After the first victims remains are found Brody glances out at the ocean, Spielberg perfectly framing the shot to say so much that we are about to be witness to. Jolts and shocks pop up from time to time to help build the unease whilst Spielberg makes the audience wait before we even see what it is that so coldly and efficiently destroys man, and then the claustrophobic switch as our brave protagonists are out at sea on Quint's boat, unaware that the giant menace is now hunting them, eyes as black as death itself.
So many great scenes linger for all time in the memory, the entrance of Quint is a hum dinger, a mournful widow reducing Brody to a stunned realism, the Indianappolis monologue, the bigger boat! Just some of the reasons why I personally love cinema so much. The score from John Williams is as effective as any for the genre and Robert Hoyt's sound team's work furthers the dread unfolding. The cast are superb and uniformly excellent, casting aside technical problems {and genuine resentment at times} to portray this story with verve and genuine depth of feeling. Yet Roy Scheider {Brody}, Robert Shaw {Quint} and Richard Dreyfuss {Hooper} were from from original choices, Charlton Heston was wanted for the role of Brody, Sterling Hayden and Lee Marvin were both mooted for Quint, and John Voight was Spielberg's preferred choice for Hooper, whilst Jaws author {and co screen writer here} Peter Benchley was heading for the top by asking for Newman, Redford and McQueen!! Imagine that!
Still it all turned out well in the end because Jaws stands the test of time as one of the best films of its type to have ever been made. No amount of complaining about continuity and a rough looking mechanical shark will ever dim its appeal, even as I revisited it recently for the hundredth time I still got tingles all over my body, file it along side King Kong in the pantheon of Monster Masterpieces, 10/10 always, now go enjoy your dip in the ocean.
- hitchcockthelegend
- Jun 12, 2008
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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
- $265,859,065
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $7,061,513
- Jun 22, 1975
- Gross worldwide
- $476,512,065
- Runtime2 hours 4 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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