Section 2 Summary
In the next scene, beachgoers frolic on the beach, as does a yelping dog. Young Alex Kintner comes out of the water and tells his mother he wants to get his raft and go back in. We follow him up the beach until the shot stops on Brody’s concerned face as a local in the background tells Ellen that she’ll never be an islander because she wasn’t born in Amity. A man throws a stick into the waves for his dog to fetch. Alex rushes back into the water on his yellow raft. We see the dog swimming back to shore, stick in mouth, and then a woman floating peacefully in the water. Brody watches the floating woman as the dog owner wrestles the stick from the dog’s mouth. Brody appears alarmed as he sees something dark bobbing near the surface by the woman, but it’s revealed to be a man wearing a dark swim cap. A man approaches Brody about some issues he wishes Brody would take care of. Brody’s attention is pulled toward a screaming woman in the water, who it turns out is just being lifted into the air by a friend. Ellen asks if Brody is okay, and if he wants their kids to only play on the beach. He says to let them swim. A group of kids run out to the water and begin swimming. Alex Kintner is much farther out on his raft.
The old man in the swim cap comes up and jokes that the chief never goes in the water. The chief calls his hat bad and the man leaves. Ellen tries to calm Brody as he watches the kids thrashing, screaming, laughing. A young boy plays in the sand singing “Do You Know the Muffin Man?” as the dog owner now calls for his dog from the shore. We see a solitary stick floating un-fetched in the water. The same suspenseful music from Chrissie’s swim resumes as the camera takes us under the water around the swimming children’s legs. The music intensifies as the shot focuses on the underside of Alex Kintner on his raft. The camera zooms right up to his legs, and then from the beach we see a huge dark figure poke out of the water as a fountain of blood squirts upward and Alex is yanked below the surface. People on the beach, including a horrified Chief Brody, watch as Alex thrashes in a cloud of his own blood and then vanishes. Brody rushes to the water’s edge and bellows for everyone to get out. All at once, dozens of adults take to the water to retrieve their kids from the scarlet patch where Alex had been swimming. Everyone clears from the water as Alex’s mother rushes down in search of her son, but instead of finding him, she sees only his torn and bloodied raft bobbing on the shoreline.
The next shot shows a sign in the town hall advertising a $3,000 reward for anyone who catches the shark that killed Alex. People are aflutter in the hall, talking vigorously over one another. One woman voices her skepticism that there’s a shark in Amity’s waters. Another says that Mrs. Kintner, Alex’s mother, is advertising the reward to papers all over New England. The mayor moves everyone into a larger room for discussion as one man says that he’ll run Mrs. Kintner’s ad as just a small addition in the very back of the Gazette. Everyone files in and the mayor calls the room to order. He brings Chief Brody to the front and has him announce that they are putting on extra deputies and shark spotters. The skeptical woman asks if he’s going to close the beaches, and he concedes to the room’s dismay that he is. He also plans to contact the oceanography Institute. The mayor shouts over the room’s commotion that the beaches’ closing will only last for 24 hours, which Brody says he didn’t agree to. A woman in the audience laments that even 24 hours is like 3 weeks for Amity’s tourism. Brody appears helpless as people continue to chatter, but then a shrieking sound of nails on a chalkboard silences the room. Everyone turns to see Captain Quint, an ornery sea captain, at the chalkboard in the back. He announces that he’ll capture and kill the shark for $10,000 on his own, without a crew. The mayor says they’ll take it under advisement, and Quint excuses himself from the room.
Section 2 Analysis
The beach scene featuring Alex Kintner’s death is a particularly well-crafted moment Jaws. The majority of it takes place from Brody’s perspective, featuring views of the swimmers in the water strictly from the beach, which various people obscure by trying to talk to him. Spielberg also makes use of the passersby to create natural wipes that transition from one cut to the next, showing first the swimmers, then Brody’s anxious face, then the swimmers again. Placing these interrupting people in the way of both our and Brody’s view of the water helps us viscerally share his frustration and unease.
The dog’s death in this scene is also an excellent example of how simply Spielberg can convey happenings without literally showing them. We first see the dog playing fetch with his owner, retrieving a stick from the water, having as much fun as any beachgoer. But when we hear the dog’s owner calling out to him with no reply, and when we see the stick floating on its own, unretrieved, we understand at once that the dog is gone without needing to see the shark actually kill it. Additionally, not only does the lone stick highlight the dog’s absence, it also provides the audience with the uneasy suggestion that something more tense is coming.
The moment when Alex Kintner is eaten by the shark features a dramatic Vertigo-esque shot of Brody. The shot makes use of a “Dolly zoom” invented by Irmin Roberts during his work on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo, and involves the camera moving toward a subject while zooming out, dramatically throwing the background away from us while bringing the subject in closer. The Vertigo shot, now perhaps most famous for this moment in Jaws, creates an effect akin to feeling one’s stomach dropping out: in an instant, we experience Brody’s utter panic and shock at witnessing the horror of Alex’s death without the actor having to do much more than appear horrified; the camerawork is all the emotional manipulation we need.
The commotion in the town hall as everyone discusses what happened at the beach, as well as Mrs. Kintner’s reward, gives us the second example of everyone talking at equal volume to one another. It works to arguably greater effect in this scene because it conveys the utter chaos and unease of the Amity townsfolk in the wake of a tragedy, and again brings us straight into the room, where in reality we wouldn’t have the benefit of artificially tuning any noise out in order to focus on a specific person’s speech.
The meeting between Brody, the mayor, and the townsfolk further sculpts the dynamic between the three: Brody is adamant about closing the beaches to protect them, but Mayor Vaughn impedes him by qualifying the closing as being only 24 hours long without even consulting him, demonstrating how little he actually cares about Brody’s opinions; with tourist money at the forefront of his mind, he understands that he and Brody have different goals. Yet even the 24 hour closing causes lamentations from the townspeople, conveying their frustration and unwillingness to prevent more shark attacks. In fact, the scene opens with one woman doubting whether there even is a shark in Amity’s water, confirming that skepticism and uncertainty lie at the base of their frustrations, the burdens of which they place upon Vaughn and Brody in turn.
We also get our first introduction to Captain Quint in this scene, albeit briefly. His use of fingers on a chalkboard to get the bickering room’s attention speak to his unorthodox behavior and harsh presence. It is immediately clear that he is everything a stereotypically salty, ornery sea captain should be, from the bizarre antics to the coarse personality.
