Dez's Favorite Film of All Time

Thanks for reading about and (some of you) discussing my Top 50 Movies. I encourage all of you to make your own lists, they are fun to put together and often inspire good conversation and hopefully encourage others to check out some movies they may have missed. Before discussing my #1 film of all time, here are some interesting statistics from my list.

Decades: It appears that I love 80’s movies, with 16 choices being from that decade. That makes sense in that I was coming of age in that decade, and so those movies tend to hit you on a gut level. In a close second was the 1970’s with 12 flicks (not surprising, a golden age for daring movie making). The 60’s had 8, the 90’s had 7, the 2000’s had 4, the 30’s and 50’s had two each, and there was one pick from the 40’s.

Judging from my Top 50, it appears I like Harrison Ford (4) and Al Pacino movies (4). Accurate on Pacino, but I don’t think Ford is all that talented. He just happened to be in some generation defining stuff. He was an important part of those movies, though, I’ll give him that. As far as directors, Francis Ford Coppola appears the most with three movies. Honestly, I think I prefer Scorsese, Kubrick, Weir and Leone if we are looking at each of their entire filmographies. But Coppola was great when he was on. He made some crap too, though.

This isn’t completely scientific and there is some crossover, but generally speaking I had 12 dramas, 7 comedies, 7 action films, 5 crime movies, four each of musical, sci-fi and horror, three each of documentaries and war films and two westerns.

And the winner is...

1. Jaws (1975), dir. Steven Spielberg


No surprise here, just look at the title of this blog. I have probably seen Jaws 17,283 times. I know every line, every scene. I know its rhythms, its ebbs and flows, its beats. Let’s get two negatives out of the way first. Jaws was the first “summer blockbuster,” and it fundamentally changed the film industry. Before Jaws, summer was seen as a dead season, the last time of year studios wanted to release their big ticket flicks. So, we have Jaws to thank for endless summer months of Transformers and super hero movies. Secondly, it was so effective in scaring audiences that it has had a negative impact on the sharks’ chances of long term survival. Sharks were obviously hunted and feared before 1975, but Jaws had the unintended consequence of villainizing an entire species. Shark attacks actually account for very few annual deaths. Peter Benchley, the author of the Jaws novel on which the film was loosely based, later became a fierce advocate for shark protection and regretted writing the novel (although his bank account certainly didn’t suffer). Benchley spent much of his later years trying to undo the damage done by his novel and the subsequent film. Sharks are a crucial link in the ocean’s delicate chain and are magnificent and beautiful creatures, and if we lose that link in the chain an entire oceanographic biosystem may collapse. End of sermon.

We can’t blame the film itself for either the evil of the summer blockbuster season or endangering sharks. Jaws was simply meant to be a thriller movie. And what a thriller it was. Rob Hill, one of the authors of the great book ‘501 Must-See Movies,’ calls Jaws “one of few films that can be described as absolutely perfect in every way,” and that “a better horror-thriller will probably never be made.” Amen, brother.

Jaws grabbed a hold of me from an early age. I first saw it when I was young enough to be completely drawn into film images, where the line between what was happening on the screen and reality was not completely drawn yet in my mind. I must have driven my parents crazy, because I wanted Jaws on the TV all the time. I knew all the characters as if they were friends of mine. One of the reasons I named this blog Gonna Need a Bigger Boat is because it is my Dad’s favorite line from the movie. I remember watching it with him when I was little, and he would actually rewind the video tape two or three times just to hear Roy Scheider utter that famous line.

What makes it so great? Well, as much as I like to view myself as an artsy fartsy sophisticated moviegoer, I’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Steven Spielberg is an absolute master of mass entertainment, and when he’s good he has me completely on board. He is godlike in his ability to craft escapist entertainment (look at #6 as well). Part of it is also a case of making lemonade out of lemons. Or, a very expensive lemon named Bruce. “Bruce” is the name given by the production team to the mechanical shark (“Bruce” was the first name of Spielberg’s lawyer). Bruce did not work about 80% of the time during filming. Therefore, out of necessity, Spielberg kept the shark offscreen most of the time. Other versions of this story claim that Spielberg planned it all on purpose for suspense, but he admits that most of the time he hid the shark out of necessity because the damn thing never worked. Hence, you have suspense and frights built up to rival Hitchcock. As Hitchcock himself once said, “if you have a bomb under the table and it goes off, that’s surprise. If you have a bomb under the table and it doesn’t go off, that’s suspense.” Well, Spielberg was forced to keep Bruce under the table for most of the film, and he was smart enough to have his bomb go off only sparingly.



ABOVE: Three men vs. the shark. (L-R) Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfus do battle against a mechanical shark and a Universal Studios anxious about delays and overrun budgets

The first half of the movie is great, but it is the second hour or so that is the most exciting stretch in movie history. Once Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) and Quint (Robert Shaw) head out to hunt the killer shark on Quint’s creaky boat, Spielberg shows his true mastery of suspense and action. You have three archetype characters in these three men. Quint is the man with experience and the skills. He is the master shark bounty hunter, the modernday Ahab who becomes obsessed with his target. They try Quint’s way first. It does not work. Then Hooper is the scientist. He has the science and technology. Hooper serves the purpose of giving the viewer scary facts and information throughout the film, such as “what we’re dealing with here is a perfect engine. An eating machine.” Hooper’s fancy technology does not work either. It is Scheider’s Brody, the Everyman, the guy out on the boat who is afraid of the water, that finally prevails. Brody is us. It is affirmation of the spirit and ingenuity of the human mind when normal people are thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

All of this aside, you can watch Jaws as simply a film that has stood the test of almost 35 years and is as exciting today as the day it was released.



ABOVE: It is a scene like this one that makes Jaws a better movie than your average summer blockbuster. This speech was written by the actor giving it, Robert Shaw as Quint. Shaw was actually an accomplished playwright as well as actor, and Shaw took it upon himself to write this monologue about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II. This is so good. While it is not quite historically accurate, it is still a mesmerizing tale.