Section 1 Summary
The opening scene of Jaws takes us through underwater vegetation with John Williams’ iconic, suspenseful music playing underneath. We cut to a bonfire surrounded by a group of teenagers drinking, playing music, and locking lips. We hear a harmonica and see one boy playing a guitar while his companions chatter excitedly. The single panning shot halts on a young, blonde boy who takes a drag from a cigarette with the same hand that clutches a beer can. He catches the eye of a blonde girl across the way smiling at him. He approaches her to begin a conversation, but she quickly stands and runs, and he gives chase. He asks her name; she says that it’s Chrissie. She yells that they’re going swimming and begins stripping her clothes off as the boy drunkenly stumbles and struggles to keep up. He attempts to remove his shirt but falls down a sandy slope with his shirt still around his head. Chrissie successfully disrobes and dives in the water. She frolics about, sticking her leg up in the air, sinking below the water, and resurfacing, and yells for him to join her. He, however, appears to have succumbed to the sauce, passing out on the sand. Chrissie continues to swim. The eerie, suspenseful music resumes as we’re shown an underwater shot of her from below. Suddenly, Chrissie is yanked below the surface, briefly at first, and then more forcefully. She shrieks for help as she appears to be carried away by something beneath the water. She thrashes about, but the only person within earshot remains unconscious on the beach. She screams in pain and is momentarily able to latch on to a nearby buoy, but is quickly pulled back into the water. Her horrific screams intensify and then end suddenly as she is pulled beneath the surface a final time. We see the boy sleeping on the sand, followed by a shot of the lone buoy out on the now-quiet water.
Night fades to day as we hear a radio host talk about incoming beach goers, and focus turns to the back of Police Chief Martin Brody’s head as he observes the distant waters. His wife Ellen lays in bed next to him. He grumbles about the sun not previously shining in their bedroom window; she reminds him that that was in the fall when they bought the house, and it’s now summer. She asks where their kids are; he says they must be in the yard, and she corrects his pronunciation to “yahd,” the way people in Amity talk.
Brody’s older son Michael comes in joking about a stream of blood coming down his hand from where he cut himself on the swings outside. Chief Brody says to stay off them until he fixes them. He receives a call telling him to come in to work, while his wife and son hold a conversation behind him at equal volume. He says goodbye to them as his older son heads out to swim. His wife tells him to be careful, but he dismisses the warning: “In this town?”
The camera follows Brody’s truck down a solitary road and pauses on a billboard advertising Amity Island’s 50th annual regatta on July 4th with a picture of a woman swimming in the ocean. In the next shot, Brody talks with the blonde boy from the beach bonfire. The boy says that Chrissie must’ve drowned, that he goes to Trinity College in Hartford, although he’s an “islander”: born in Amity. Brody says that he’s from New York. A distraught officer calls them over with a loud whistle, and they approach to find Chrissie’s mutilated corpse, covered in crabs.
At the police department, we see the blonde boy’s haunted face in the fore as Polly, the chief’s assistant, comes in. She tells the chief of police that people are calling to complain about the local karate school, but is interrupted by a call from the medical inspector, which she gives to Brody. As he talks, we see a shot of the form Brody is filling out on his typewriter. Under “Probable Cause of Death,” he types out “SHARK ATTACK” in slow, careful strokes. Polly begins telling him about a note from the fire chief as Brody stands and asks for a list of the city’s water activities for the day. He asks Deputy Hendricks where they keep the “Beach Closed” signs, and Hendricks says they’ve never had any. A hatted man gripes to Brody about an issue outside his store as Brody exits. He yells back to have the man fill out a form and then heads up the street, the sound of a marching band growing as he goes. An old man approaches him about his own issue, and Brody says he’ll get back to him later as he comes upon a busy intersection with an “Amity Island 4th of July Celebration” banner strung above it, bustling with people and the booming band.
Brody buys paint, brushes, and wood for signs from a local store. Deputy Hendricks pulls up in his truck outside and tells him that the boy scouts are doing a mile swim for their merit badges in April Bay, but that there’s no phone access where the boys are. Brody gives the supplies to Hendricks and tells him to make signs closing the beaches and forbidding swimming by order of the Amity Police Department. As Brody leaves in the truck, Amity’s Mayor Larry Vaughn asks Hendricks where he’s going. Hendricks says there was a fatal shark attack on the beach early that morning and that they have to close the beaches.
Brody watches the boys swim their mile in the bay with their instructor in a boat beside them. He finishes a cigarette as the mayor’s car pulls up onto the small ferry taking him out to the boys. The boat departs as the mayor tells Brody that they’re all a bit anxious that the brand new chief is trying to close the beaches when Amity relies on tourism to sustain their economy in the summer. If Amity’s beaches close, they’ll swim elsewhere, like at Cape Cod and Long Island. Brody says it’s better than serving them as food, but the medical inspector argues they’ve never had that kind of trouble before. He admits that it could’ve been a boating accident that killed Chrissie and says that he’ll stand by that assumption and change the paperwork. The mayor suggests that Chrissie could’ve become tired while swimming and been hit by a boat—that it’s happened before—and says that these things are psychological. Announcing the presence of a shark could cause a panic during the big holiday. The mayor has the ferry return to the dock.
Section 1 Analysis
It’s perhaps fitting that Jaws opens with what is arguably the most iconic theme music of any film in history: the eerie, suspenseful theme in which two alternating notes crescendo and quickly build anticipation before anything concrete to fear is even introduced. Composer John Williams has said that this ominous music was meant to represent the shark as an "unstoppable force" of "mindless and instinctive attacks.” The music is not only a great emotional manipulator in its ability to elicit terror from an unsuspecting audience, but also an amazing symbol for the shark itself, who appears physically so infrequently and is often represented by the resumption of the music only. Indeed, not once during the attack on Chrissie do we actually see any piece of the shark, and yet the combination of her terrified thrashing and the unsettling music is enough to convey the attack without any appearance by the attacker. The scene of her death teaches the audience from the get-go that the suspenseful music will unequivocally mean “shark,” regardless of any other indication of its presence, for the rest of the film.
As we see Brody and Ellen for the first time, the writing conveys a lot of exposition quickly and seamlessly: they only recently bought their house in the fall, and it’s now summer; they have two kids young enough to be out playing; people in Amity talk with a Boston-like accent, suggesting they’re in Massachusetts, while Brody talks like a New Yorker. As Brody talks with the young blonde boy, we hear the boy call himself an “islander,” our first introduction to the word, to which Brody responds that he’s indeed from New York. These moments communicate a lot of small but important details to the viewer very quickly without impeding the flow of the story.
In the Brody’s kitchen, we’re introduced to another motif that will become common throughout the film: different people talking simultaneously at equal volume. It happens first in the form of Brody’s conversation on the phone while Ellen tends to Michael’s hand wound in the background. While we might expect the filmmakers to decide which conversation is more important and focus us on that one, we instead hear them at the same volume, keeping us focused on each but preventing us from catching everything that one is saying without losing pieces of the other. This serves to establish the viewer more concretely in the reality of the characters, where film editing can’t help them turn down one conversation in favor of another. It also introduces an element of excitement and chaos to the scene, and will be used to even greater effect later in the film.
The mundane routine of being chief of police in Amity are made abundantly clear as we accompany Brody on the job: first, he dismisses his wife’s warning to be careful with a skeptical, “In this town?” suggesting the lack of excitement that he expects from his day. Then, throughout his dealing with Chrissie’s death, he is inundated with multiple reports and complaints from Polly and various townsfolk about seemingly trivial matters, which serve not only to illustrate how boring his days ordinarily are, but also how comparatively shocking and horrifying Chrissie’s murder is as a case for him to deal with. Our understanding of Amity as a quiet, excitement-less town is crucial to the devastating impact of the shark attacks to come.
Mayor Larry Vaughn quickly establishes his capitalist motives and influence over Brody in the way he follows him aboard the car ferry to discuss the so-called “shark attack.” Throughout the scene, Brody is positioned to the far left of the screen, while the several other men aboard appear like they’re ambushing him, illustrating how powerless Brody is with them in charge. Mayor Vaughn makes it clear that his values lie in Amity’s economy, in keeping the town thriving through tourism, an innocent enough goal initially, but one which obstructs Brody’s ability to protect the town. Vaughn’s capitalistic ambitions blind him to the danger the shark presents, undoubtedly placing future attacks on his hands. The car ferry even makes a complete 180 during the conversation, a physical representation of Vaughn’s ability to undo Brody’s efforts to protect the town and steer them straight back into harm’s way.
