Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb, from Benchley's novel.
I had seen this a few months previously; I re-watched it with my sister who had not seen it. She was not as impressed by it as I was when I saw it. Why, I don't know. Perhaps it is because she doesn't really know its significance in film history, or because she didn't watch it the way I did (which was without ad breaks).
I didn't follow it as closely as I did the first time I saw it, but I still think it is one of the best blockbusters ever made. At my recent course we looked at the beach sequence, where the child and the dog are the victims. We were asked to watch the scene several times, write down all the shots and then figure how many camera set-ups there were. There are a huge number of shots in that scene (over fifty), and, as it turns out, only two camera set-ups: Spielberg and his cinematographer Bill Butler put the camera on a track, allowing them to move the camera with ease. Impressive, huh? And all from a young, relatively inexperienced director!
If you haven't seen this, you have to watch it. No excuses. And if you have seen it, watch it again, keeping in mind how young Spielberg was.
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