| Issue #30, October 20, 2006 |
Honoring the Artist: Jaws Movie Poster
Honoring this week’s cover is a first; we are not celebrating the artist who created the poster image, but instead paying homage to both the movie, Jaws, and its director, Hamptons neighbor Steven Spielberg.
This doesn’t suggest that the poster is without aesthetic value, even if such worth derives from a marketing strategy appealing to popular culture’s penchant for sex and violence. Simply speaking, the shark’s head is a blatant phallic symbol, ready to prey on an innocent female figure (who might be swimming nude as well). Archetypical imagery completes the picture, namely the presence of water connoting purity, and penetration.
Conversely, the film’s conception is original, pandering to neither popular tastes nor industry expectations, owing its creativity to Spielberg and his editor, Verna Fields. While we admit that some of Jaws’ cinematic techniques had been previously employed, Spielberg and his team used them in new and different ways. Primarily, these devices concerned the creation of anxiety and suspense: the work is less a “monster” movie than one predicated on paranoia and fear.
Editing plays an important role in producing anticipation, according to editor Verna Fields (who become a V.P. of Universal Studios). In a conversation with this critic several years ago, Ms. Fields outlined her approach for cutting between shots, delaying the transition from one image to another for two or three seconds – just enough time to make the audience feel unbalanced, building up suspense regarding what image would appear next. Such anxiety continued in Spielberg’s creation of subject movement.
Imagine the scene. Opening day for the summer season is fraught with danger, since a girl has been found dead from a shark attack. No matter. The mayor is determined to carry on as usual. Yet police chief Roy Scheider (another Hamptons neighbor) is determined to keep a watchful eye as he sits on the beach. That task proves difficult; people are constantly walking in front of him and masking his field of vision.
Spielberg’s opposing camera movements also contributed greatly to disconcertion and anxiety. As Scheider races towards the ocean, believing he sees the shark, the camera zooms in as the camera travels backwards. Such a moment was surely an important aesthetic development, adding the aspect of kinetics/motion to our other five senses.
One final element produced suspense and anticipation: the idea that the audience did not actually see the entire shark until at least two-thirds into the film. True, we would see bits and pieces here and there and even were subjected to his point of view as he traveled through the water. But it was only when the shark’s hunters were on the boat that he finally made his appearance, jumping full-scale out of the ocean.
What an image that was. One we still remember more than thirty years later.
–Marion Wolberg Weiss
 |
