Ciao, cinemistos and cinemistas! (An italian work I just made up.)
Welcome to another Retro-splainers as Ian and Dave go back – way back – to 1975 and the big, smasheroo hit of that summer: Jaws – the film that changed the movies.
David and Ian are joined by resident shark expert Pia Guerra, who is there to keep it real with some important shark facts. The most important shark fact being: stop killing the poor things!!!
What does everyone make of this oldie, but a goldie? Well, let them fansplain it for you!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Thanks, guys. What an appropriate film to revisit in the dying days of summer! And thanks to Pia for all the shark info. Jaws was rated PG-13, so I was just old enough to see it in its first-run on a wide screen. Yeah, it looked and sounded great. I had already read the book, but it didn’t spoil the movie experience. Those jump scenes, the humour, the USS Indianapolis story and the explosive ending were all new and surprising. In the novel, Brody was a more conflicted character: he was an islander and his wife was a summer vacationer who’d “married down.” He had a chip on his shoulder about rich folks in general and Hooper specifically. But by dropping that, they did make Brody a nicer, more family-friendly guy which was obviously good for the film’s bottom line. Speaking of bottoms, I think another reason why they kept the nudity in the opening scene was that it was depicted on the iconic paperback cover of the best-seller. They used the same artwork on the movie poster (which you’ve posted here) in a kind of marketing bait-and-switch. The movie lured in readers familiar with the sensationalistic opening/image from the book, then it shifted away from its potboilerish roots into a more straight-forward action-adventure.
BTW, All That Jazz, which got Roy Scheider a Best Actor nomination was pretty successful by Hollywood standards. It was also nominated for Best Picture, Director and Original Screenplay and won in several craft categories. The opening audition sequence set to George Benson’s “On Broadway” is worth watching all on its own.