Jaws is a movie that’s aged with me, to some extent. Its initial frights are now ineffective, even though I still anticipate them with some amount of dread. And I still laugh at the jokes with a sort of obligation, and I still listen with earnest sympathy to Quint’s description of the fate of the USS Indianapolis. The film has become a familiar, reliable mainstay, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that invites little generational evolution.
Recently, I saw this in a theater for the first time, with a sellout crowd at the Coolidge Corner Theater, and found it to be a very different experience. The film’s staple frights – visually and aurally magnified – were unanticipatedly horrific, but what I found most remarkable in this viewing is how deftly the film plays its audience, modulating a theater full of responses with exceptional synchronization.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 35mm print
15 Oct 2008 5:46 PM | Comments (1)
I saw this film for the first time in the theatre in July ‘75 when I was 12 years old. My father took me with the gleeful comfort of knowing I had no idea what I was in for. The fact that the monster kept hidden beneath the waves was of little consolation when Bed Gardner’s head popped out of the hole in the hull of his boat. I went into mortified shock. My eyes rolled back inside my head and I shrunk back into the theatre seat in a quivering, gelatinous mass of epileptic flesh, much to the joy of my evil parentage. I survived changed forever, and probably like you Rumsey, have these nostalgic moments to look forward to, again and again.
As a component to our recent 2008 in Review feature, this year we’re requesting submissions from our readers for their choices for the best films, DVDs, and discoveries from the past year. The results will be published later in January.
marky
16 October 2008
3:40 PM