In an attempt to resurrect this blog somewhat, after a few years of slow posts, I’d been meaning to start that process by mentioning the new Jaws film. Except, of course, by new Jaws film, I mean the 3-D conversion of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic. An important film, particularly to audience members of a certain generation, Jaws is often cited as the film that started the modern phenomena of the ‘summer blockbuster’ (audiences literally did queue around the block to see the film), with tactical summer country wide openings on the same date and wall to wall media promotion. Hard to think that prior to this most big films didn’t receive a huge blanket opening, and were often released into cinemas gradually, with different town and cities across, say, North America or Europe opening at different times.
However, the most significant thing I’ve always thought about Jaws is how it both personifies the Spielberg style blockbuster and also stands in contrast to many of them. It sounds like a huge hit film of the time, with its iconic John Williams score (the unmistakable sound of Williams soundtracked everything from The Poseidon Adventure, through to Superman, Star Wars, ET, Raiders…you name it), Spielberg’s kinetic direction, the fast pace…but for all those pop corn familiar hallmarks, Jaws is (ostensibly at least) a film about a killer shark in a seaside resort, where characters get brutally murdered by a hungry fish. I do so love that the film that paved the way for Star Wars and latterly Marvel and Avatar, is essentially a horror picture, that isn’t really family viewing.
But, all that aside, Jaws remains a fantastic picture, a marvellous jelling of story, production and performance (the central trio of Shneider, Dreyfuss and Shaw remain a delight), where the unreliability of the mechanic shark meant its appearances were kept to minimum and elevated the film’s suspense and terror as a result. That was all very true of the film, so I approached the modern 3-D conversion with some trepidation. Some of these conversions have been very bad; money grabbing quick conversions that do not serve the picture. However, I’ve just seen Jaws in 3D (not to be confused with the risible Jaws 3-D from 1983) and it’s still the same wonderful film, but on occasion it felt like I’d actually climbed into the water. Chrissie’s death at the beginning was surprisingly horrifying. Like I was swimming next to her as she gets killed. The 3-D enhances the layered image structure of the original, where fences, people, buildings and so forth and positioned in ordinal presentations which lend themselves well to the new effects. But never is the new presentation for the film more effective as when the action takes to the water and for once, a 3-D film truly puts you in the thick of the suspense, and occasionally the horror. Not bad work for a film that was already 47 years old.
I think I’ll leave that bath until tomorrow.
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