Jaws (1975)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1975
	Director: Steven Spielberg (E.T., Jurassik Park)
	Actors: Roy Scheider (The French Connection), Robert Shaw (From Russia with Love), Richard Dreyfuss (Encounters of the Third Kind)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Adventure
	Conditions of visioning: 05.03.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A killer shark is about the ruin the summer season on the Amity island, and chief Brody (Scheider) will have to fight this threat.
Review: I remember very well that this movie gave me nightmares for many nights when I first saw it as a kid, and then I could't watch it again for ten years! The impression it makes on me now is different, I watch it with different eyes, but it doesn't change the fact that Jaws influenced my perception of cinema, as it did influence many filmmakers. It is a straigh-forward adventure film, and all side stories have been removed from the novel from which the movie is adapted. So many monster movies have been done after Jaws that it doesn't look original, but one has to remember that it was the first. Also it is more than a monster movie but a real adventure, and it was shot in this way on purpose as Steven Spielberg explains in the making-of. The Blu-ray is indeed accompanied with a 2-hours making-of documentary. It seems like the interviews were shot in 1995 and the documentary edited in 2005, and it tells everything you wanted to know about the making of the movie that became at that period the most successful of all times. The difficulties in shooting at sea with a capricious mechanical shark, the very long and tiring production, details on how certain scenes were shot, including the introduction one, and how the iconic music from John Williams is responsible for half the success of Jaws. The process of restauration of the original negative is presented in a separate feature. It was done as part of the 100th anniversary of Universal. To really appreciate the improved quality, I watched the first ten minutes of my DVD of Jaws, released for the 25th anniversary (so in 2000), and which is I think the first DVD I ever bought, before I even own a DVD player! The colors and contrast are indeed improved, the resolution also obviously, but the most striking is the removal of all scratched and spots that were still present on the DVD. The Blu-ray edition looks indeed very good and ultimate.
Rating: 9 /10