Jaws (1975) | |
Plot Synopsis (continued)
At the Amity Harbor, Deputy Hendricks jokes to Brody about Charlie's wife being upset about her roast being used as bait: "Mrs. Kintner must have put her ad in Field and Stream." Brody quips: "It's more like The National Enquirer." A boat arrives with a mangy-haired, fast-talking, hippie know-it-all marine biologist/ichthyologist (shark specialist) Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss, after walk-on roles in The Graduate (1967) and The Valley of the Dolls (1967), and his appearances in George Lucas' American Graffiti (1973) and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)), one of the research scientist experts from the Oceanographic Institute requested by Brody. The rational fish scientist is offered a hand by Amity's local fisherman Ben Gardner (Craig Kingsbury) to help step up onto the dock from his boat. Meanwhile, an armada of numerous boats prepares to leave the harbor dangerously overloaded with amateur shark hunters from all over New England. They are ready to haul bloody bait, beer, a bow and arrow, and even sticks of dynamite. When he sees the suicidal mission of "nuts" about to leave for the open ocean, Hooper turns away and chuckles to himself: "They're all gonna die." He also alerts an overwhelmed Brody about the eight guys in the overcrowded launch: "None of them are gonna get out of the harbor alive." Disgruntled about all of the out-of-town visitors, Gardner mumbles to himself about their stupidity as he heads out with them:
Hooper's first request of Brody is to see the remains of the first victim ("the girl on the beach") - Chrissie - allegedly a victim in the report of a "probable boating accident." In the morgue scene, Hooper thoroughly inspects the remains and describes the multiple injuries of the girl. [He refers to the shark as a squalus - the Latin word for shark. However, squalus technically refers to a family of dogfish sharks, not the great white sharks, which are classified in the lamnidae family.] He ends his exhaustive, gruesome examination with a 'plain-English' statement:
The camera pulls back from a closeup of the bloody, grinning, lop-sided mouth of a good-sized, real-life Tiger Shark as dozens of shark hunters display their recent trophy-catch on the dock. The shark looks like the victim of a lynching as it is hauled up by a rope for inspection. As the town's newspaper editor tells his assistant as they leave the scene: "I wanna go AP and UPI. I want to get on the state wire services, see if Boston will pick it up, and go national...," both Hooper and Brody approach from the right. Chief Brody smiles broadly at the bloody carcass: "(Did) Ben Gardner get this?!" Convinced and jubilant that his problems have ended, Brody happily poses for pictures with the triumphant fishermen, while a pensive Matt Hooper measures the fish's gaping mouth ("bite radius") with his tape measure. The majesterial Quint enters the harbor - derisively looking down on the scene from the upper bridge of his boat. As the mayor strides into the scene, assuring everyone that: "We can start breathing again," Hooper - in the foreground - backs away from other fishermen (off-screen) as he raises questions:
Skeptical of everyone's conclusions, Matt Hooper takes the distracted Chief aside and tells him there is a distinct problem ("Martin, there are all kinds of sharks in the waters, you know. Hammerheads, white tips, blues, mankos, and the chances that these bozos got the exact shark...it's 100 to 1"). He is fairly certain that Chrissie was killed by a different shark:
To confirm his conclusion, Hooper wants to cut open the slow-working digestive system of the shark and inspect it. The Mayor, who has been eavesdropping on their conversation, refuses with a plausible excuse:
Obviously, the mayor plans to announce to tourists and newspeople that the crisis is over, and Amity Island is once again open to tourists - the beaches are now safe after the public menace has been eliminated. A black-veiled, mourning Mrs. Kintner approaches, removes her face covering, and slaps Chief Brody hard across the face. The grieving mother is enraged and fighting to hold back tears. With her black veil swirling around her head in the wind, she believes her boy would still be alive if Brody had closed the beaches after the first shark attack:
Chief Brody stares at the ground, feeling miserable, knowing that the woman is correct in her assessment. The Mayor apologizes to Brody, believing she is wrong ("I'm sorry, Martin, she's wrong"), as Brody walks slowly away. He orders the tiger shark to be disposed of: "All right fellas, let's cut this ugly son-of-a-bitch down before it stinks up the whole island. Harv, you and Carl take it out tomorrow and dump it in the drink." Later that evening, in a calming, quiet, believable homelife scene during dinner, a rather detached Brody sits with his son Sean at the table and contemplates the events of the day. His young son mimics his drinking gesture with his own glass of milk. The son also imitates the way his troubled father holds his hands in deep thought and then covers his face. When Brody finally notices that his son is copying his finger movements, he playfully makes funny faces at him (the son responds with clawed hands and a shark-eating face), and then lovingly asks for a kiss: "Come here. Give us a kiss...Because I need it." Hooper visits the Brody's home (where the mood is somber), bringing both a bottle of red and white wine to their dinner table as a household gift. After Hooper helps himself to Brody's uneaten dinner plate, Brody's wife forces a conversation with him:
He describes his long fascination with sharks since boyhood ("I love sharks"), and he tells a tale from his past that actually foreshadows the conclusion of the film:
(During Hooper's long-winded discussion, Brody peels open and un-cork-screws the red wine bottle, and pours it into his water glass without letting it breathe.) Hooper plans to "go to the Institute tomorrow and tell them that you still have a shark problem here...They caught a shark, not the shark. Not the shark that killed Chrissie Watkins and probably not the shark that killed the little boy." Hooper learns from Brody's wife (when she playfully kids her husband and lovingly touches his arm) that he doesn't even like the water, swimming or boating:
Martin asks Hooper whether it is true that most people are attacked by sharks in three feet of water and about ten feet from the beach. Hooper confirms that he is correct. Brody also worries that the attacking shark won't go away if people keep swimming at the beach - providing fresh, human food for the shark: "Now this shark that, that swims alone...rogue, yeah, now this guy, he - he keeps swimming around in a place where the feeding is good until the food supply is gone, right?" To get the opportunity they missed earlier in the afternoon, Brody and Hooper proceed down to the city pier and cut open the Tiger shark to examine its insides - the contents of its 'dinner plate.' (During the scene, a fog horn sounds in the distance.) They find only fish, a scavenged tin can, and a Louisiana license plate with the state's slogan: "Sportsmen's Paradise." With a straight face, Hooper claims that the shark came from the South: "he came up in the Gulf Stream, from southern waters." Brody matches his humor: "He didn't eat a car, did he?" Brody realizes the danger facing Amity - the shark has claimed Amity Island as his territory. And he knows that his fear of the water will weaken his efforts:
Out on Hooper's high-tech oceanographic boat on a night-time ride, they hunt for the shark on the theory that sharks are "night feeders." Brody drinks wine and opens up about why he has moved to Amity Island from the urban jungle of New York - to find a safe haven for his family:
They cruise right to the stretch where the shark has been feeding. Admitting that he is part of a rich family, Hooper tells the Police Chief that he financed the boat's sophisticated closed-circuit TV system, underwater cameras and expensive fish-finder radar. Both men find themselves in ironic situations:
In their search for the shark, they come across the damaged, abandoned fishing boat of Ben Gardner and Brody asks: "What happened?" Hooper puts on his scuba gear to inspect the hull from underwater. Brody is uneasy and anxious, wishing to tow it in first, but Hooper insists ("I've just got to check something out"). Diving into the murky, claustrophobic water, Hooper finds a huge, serrated tooth embedded in a large hole in the hull. Then, in the biggest, single-most shocking moment of the film, when he examines the tooth and comes in for a closer look, the severed head of Gardner's corpse appears in the gaping hole. Hooper, scared to death (with the audience), accidentally drops the shark's tooth as he struggles to the surface of the yellowish water. The next day, Brody and Hooper talk heatedly to the mayor on the hillside where the Amity Island billboard is located. Brody is fearful and warns the Mayor about the conclusions of their findings the night before: "This is a Great White, Larry, a big one. And any shark expert in the world'll tell ya it's a killer. It's a man-eater." Hooper also explains the danger:
Mayor Vaughn logically argues back, smirking to himself that they don't have proof of the tooth as evidence:
The stubborn mayor still maintains an attitude of business first:
The mayor responds to the "sick vandalism" by ordering Brody to apprehend the graffiti vandals who have defaced the public service billboard ("a deliberate mutilation of a public service message"), painting in a dialogue balloon with the words "Help!! SHARK" coming from the mouth of the swimmer on a surfboard:
Hooper expresses disdain for the mayor who refuses to acknowledge that there is a shark problem:
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