How Jaws' imperfections make it a masterclass in filmmaking

Did you see that?

It’s a line uttered on one of Amity’s beaches as little Alex Kintner gets chewed into chum by Bruce. The guy can’t believe what he’s seeing. And who can blame him, it’s not everyday you see someone turned into a fountain of bubbling blood a few feet from the shore.

Thing is, when you watch Jaws there’s a whole lot more than shark sightings to catch your eye - so much more.

There are…..MISTAKES!

I know, it’s hard to accept but people need to hear the truth. THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE does contain one or two bloopers.

Thing is, who cares? I mean really WHO CARES? If someone’s wearing blue shorts one minute then white the next or the shark’s swimming forwards and then does a nifty three-point-turn the next, would it really spoil your enjoyment of the movie?

Well, OK, maybe that last one would.

A great film you love, allows for repeated viewings and it’s brilliance means you never tire of it. The little imperfections only add to its charm. It’s still perfect. In fact, I’d go as far to say it even more so now.

Having some wag sneer at Jaws and say “Ha! Look at that! They really screwed up there” is like someone pointing out when your kid’s in the Nativity dressed as one of the Three Kings but he’s got Air Jordans under his costume. And your problem with this is?

It’s little moments when you see something and you think “hang on a minute, did I just see…” just makes it all the more enjoyable. Does for me anyhow.

And it speaks of when the thing was made too. Back in the 70s you had to go with what you got, no scrubbing it out later in post production. And Jaws went massively over schedule so probably the thought of reshooting a scene on the Orca again, just because you see a cameraman’s foot in shot for a second was met with an angry chorus of “SCREW THAT!”

Six years later as Spielberg filmed Raiders of the Lost Ark, he knew he had to be fast. There couldn’t be any fiddling around, searching for perfection, he had to prove he could bring a movie in under-schedule and under-budget. He couldn’t let the crazy shoots of Jaws, 1941 and Close Encounters be what he was known for so he and George Lucas made a pact.

They would shoot it like it was an actual Saturday Morning serial, just like the ones it was based on from RKO in the ‘40s and ‘50s. They’d have quick set ups and make the whole thing move along so fast, any mistakes that slipped through wouldn’t matter.

They also made sure that they had a top notch script and crew. Spielberg storyboarded everything to an inch of its life and in the end it paid off. Yes, some continuity errors made it into the finished movie, but if you cared about that as a member of the audience, you were missing the point of it all.

Back in time to 1975 and the hard slogging nature of the filming on Martha’s Vineyard did leave a couple of little bloopers bobbing about in the feature.

I’m not going to bother with stuff like changing weather conditions or the noticeable lack of leaves on the trees and then suddenly lots of Spring blossom, there’s bigger - more interesting fish out there.

As if by magic - a shark appeared!

One of my favourites is from the first real introduction of Quint at the town meeting. His famous nails-down-the-blackboard moment is the stuff of cinematic legend. It shows us who the man really is. He doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks of him - “…too many chiefs on this island…” and he’s got no time for authority, he had enough of that during the war, he just needs a way to make everyone pay attention to him.

The townsfolk part (like the waters of the Red Sea did for Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments) and the camera glides through the space, coming to a stop in front of everyone’s favourite shark killer. The shot is wonderful really, like a boat slowly picking its way through a harbour to its mooring point.

But if you rewind the movie for about 5 minutes - when everyone’s discussing whether the bounty’s going to be in ‘cash or cheque’ and that woman says that she doesn’t ‘think it’s funny at all’ and you glance to the blackboard, it’s nice and clean.

There’s no big picture of a shark with a little man in its mouth.

Now, maybe Quint drew it while everyone was yakking on about closing the beaches and the summer deputies. Maybe… But probably not. I mean he’s a sly old devil, but he’s not that sneaky.

Hooper inspects Chrissie’s remains

Next up is the scene in the Coroner’s Office. Hooper comes in and promptly gets a bit of a shock when the guy brings out what looks like a washing up bowl, containing the remains of Chrissie Watkins. Hopper suddenly realises the size of the problem they’re dealing with.

He goes through the inspection of what’s left of the victim and then there’s this really weird cut that makes no sense at all.

Hooper lifts one of Chrissie’s arms and says “this is what happens”

And then it cuts to him doing something else and then its all over. It’s been poured over before by film experts and it seems that it’s just one of those ‘let’s just move the thing along a bit, who cares about all the science stuff - get to the action!’

Sort of a ‘don’t bore us, get to the chorus’ type thing.

So that’s exactly what they did. They made up a line and then got on with the film.

The final blooper is the one that’s probably the most noticeable but maybe it doesn’t get pointed out so much.

The Case of the Vanishing Chair

On the deck of the Orca there is a big sport fishing chair, bolted right in the middle of the deck. It’s there when they’re loading up to head out to sea but in the final few scenes…it’s gone.

As Quint needles Hooper about his ‘anti-shark cage’, he reveals he saw a shark eat a rocking chair once, perhaps that’s what sharks do and when no one was looking Bruce snuck on deck and gobbled the chair up, I guess we’ll never know.

Or maybe the chair was no longer important to the script and everyone knew Robert Shaw would eventually have to slide to his death into the shark’s gaping maw. If the chair was still there, he could easily survive.

So they just took the chair out.

The chair’s only reason for being there is in that tense little scene when Quint notices that something’s nibbling on the line. The music rumbles quietly in the background, Brody’s trying to master a bowline knot and Hooper’s reading some manual - they have no idea what’s going on. But Quint, he’s gently clipping himself into the harness and easing back on the line, leaning into the battered old chair in preparation for what he knows is about to happen.

Then the shark pulls of the line!

But when the scene’s over, so is the chair.

The first time you notice it, you think, ‘Hang on, where’d the chair go? Oh come on, didn’t anyone on the crew think the audience would notice?’

Well that’s the thing. Maybe Spielberg just figured, its a movie about a 25 ft Great White Shark with an above average IQ. It can dive with three barrels attached to his back (no matter what Quint thinks) and right at the end the script says it’ll explode because it’s eaten a compressed air tank and the Brody shoots at it.

When you look at the lunacy of the idea, a missing chair is not exactly the most crazy thing going on.

People worry about this sort of thing far too much, they let it destroy the magic of the movie and refuse to suspend their disbelief, frantically pointing out how they saw something and it shows a kind of lack of care on the part of the production.

Well no, not really. All is does is show how ridiculous these people are. Movies are not real life, sometimes they’re based on real events but on the whole they’re just stories.

Jaws was so brilliantly edited and directed and scored that even the bits where, yes - I admit, you can tell it’s not a totally lifelike shark, simply do not matter. It’s there, on the screen. It’s an actual working model that’s smashing into boats and chomping down on people.

The Orca is actually sinking, Susan Backlinie playing Chrissie Watkins is really getting yanked back and forth by ropes to simulate the shark attack. It’s not in a tank.

It feels real but at the same time you know its a movie and that’s ok.

Nowadays I think maybe we want a little bit too much ‘perfection’ in our set-pieces and stunts, we want no visible strings, we demand photorealistic CGI (but don’t often get it) and quite often the filmmakers go after all that sparkly stuff instead of telling the best possible story.

It’s the same with music.

You can have a really successful song but it’s got no humanity or soul. The drums are programmed, any ‘guitars’ on it are samples and played on a keyboard and then the whole thing’s fed into a computer so it can be what’s known as ‘quantised’. This means that it’s absolutely perfectly in time with no deviation whatsoever.

It becomes homogenised and sterile, sounding clinical and inorganic. And that’s before you even get to the auto tuned vocals.

Art is not about ‘perfection’, it’s about ideas and figuring stuff out. You don’t need to smooth off all the rough edges so it gleams like a window display at Tiffany’s.

It’s the difference between an illustration and a photograph.

Photographs at great but if what you’re doing is a work of fiction, get the pencils and paints out - this isn’t about reality.

Words by Tim Armitage

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