HOLLYWOOD CLASSIC # 4 JAWS
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Jaws is a 1975 horror–thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel of the same name. The novel was inspired by the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916. In the film, the police chief of Amity Island, a summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from the predations of a huge great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the money-grubbing town council. After several attacks, the police chief proceeds to enlist the help of a marine biologist and later a professional shark hunter to kill the shark. The film stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as the shark hunter Quint, Lorraine Gary as Brody's wife Ellen, and Murray Hamilton as the greedy Mayor Vaughn.
Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, as it is the father of the summer blockbuster movie. Due to the film's success in advanced screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release than ever before. It is thought to be the first film that advanced Steven Spielberg's directorial career. The film was followed by three sequels, generally regarded as declining in quality with each successive entry and greatly inferior to the original: Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987).
John Williams contributed the Academy-Award winning film score, which was ranked #7 on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. The main "shark" theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes, F and F sharp, became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger. The soundtrack piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate french horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound a little more threatening. When the piece was first played for Spielberg, he was said to have laughed at John Williams, thinking that it was a joke. Spielberg later said that without Williams' score, the film would have been only half as successful, and Williams acknowledges that the score jumpstarted his career. He had previously scored Spielberg's feature film debut The Sugarland Express, and went on to collaborate with him on almost all of his films.
The score contains echoes of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, particularly the opening of "The Adoration of the Earth". Another influence may have been Ed Plumb's score for Walt Disney's Bambi, which uses a low, repeating musical motif to suggest imminent danger from the off-screen threat of Man. The music has drawn comparisons to Bernard Herrman's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, in which the music enhances the presence of an unseen terror, in this case the shark.
There are various interpretations on the meaning and effectiveness of the theme. Some have thought the two-note expression is intended to mimic the shark's heartbeat, beginning slow and controlled as the killer hunts, and rising to a frenzied, shrieking climax as it approaches its prey. One critic believes the true strength of the score is its ability to create a "harsh silence", abruptly cutting away from the music right before it climaxes. Also, it has been noted that the audience is conditioned to associate the shark with its theme, since the score is never used as a red herring; it only plays when the real shark appears. This is later exploited when the shark suddenly appears with no musical introduction. Regardless of the meaning behind it, the theme is widely acknowledged as one of the most recognized scores of all time. Not only is the soundtrack to "Jaws" one of my favorites the movie itself is still my all time favorite horror-thriller movie!
Boem-boem-boem-boem-boem...
Click here to see the trailer:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/trailers-screenplay-E10947-10-2
Click here to see the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGqg-OUmW7s
Click here to see the movie in 30sec.:
http://www.angryalien.com/0804/jawsbunnies.asp
.
Jaws is a 1975 horror–thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel of the same name. The novel was inspired by the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916. In the film, the police chief of Amity Island, a summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from the predations of a huge great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the money-grubbing town council. After several attacks, the police chief proceeds to enlist the help of a marine biologist and later a professional shark hunter to kill the shark. The film stars Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as marine biologist Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as the shark hunter Quint, Lorraine Gary as Brody's wife Ellen, and Murray Hamilton as the greedy Mayor Vaughn.
Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, as it is the father of the summer blockbuster movie. Due to the film's success in advanced screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release than ever before. It is thought to be the first film that advanced Steven Spielberg's directorial career. The film was followed by three sequels, generally regarded as declining in quality with each successive entry and greatly inferior to the original: Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987).
John Williams contributed the Academy-Award winning film score, which was ranked #7 on AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores. The main "shark" theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes, F and F sharp, became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger. The soundtrack piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate french horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound a little more threatening. When the piece was first played for Spielberg, he was said to have laughed at John Williams, thinking that it was a joke. Spielberg later said that without Williams' score, the film would have been only half as successful, and Williams acknowledges that the score jumpstarted his career. He had previously scored Spielberg's feature film debut The Sugarland Express, and went on to collaborate with him on almost all of his films.
The score contains echoes of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, particularly the opening of "The Adoration of the Earth". Another influence may have been Ed Plumb's score for Walt Disney's Bambi, which uses a low, repeating musical motif to suggest imminent danger from the off-screen threat of Man. The music has drawn comparisons to Bernard Herrman's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, in which the music enhances the presence of an unseen terror, in this case the shark.There are various interpretations on the meaning and effectiveness of the theme. Some have thought the two-note expression is intended to mimic the shark's heartbeat, beginning slow and controlled as the killer hunts, and rising to a frenzied, shrieking climax as it approaches its prey. One critic believes the true strength of the score is its ability to create a "harsh silence", abruptly cutting away from the music right before it climaxes. Also, it has been noted that the audience is conditioned to associate the shark with its theme, since the score is never used as a red herring; it only plays when the real shark appears. This is later exploited when the shark suddenly appears with no musical introduction. Regardless of the meaning behind it, the theme is widely acknowledged as one of the most recognized scores of all time. Not only is the soundtrack to "Jaws" one of my favorites the movie itself is still my all time favorite horror-thriller movie!
Boem-boem-boem-boem-boem...
Click here to see the trailer:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/trailers-screenplay-E10947-10-2
Click here to see the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGqg-OUmW7s
Click here to see the movie in 30sec.:
http://www.angryalien.com/0804/jawsbunnies.asp
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posted by Patrick at Tuesday, November 21, 2006
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