The New Yorker take a look at Jaws in this excellent article about Spielberg’s seminal shark film.

“If the only scenes you remember are the film’s traumatic horrors, it’s a revelation to savor how much summery flavor and warmth and satiric humor the director and his writer wring from the setup (Gottlieb, who also plays a small role as a newspaper editor, did the final, on-set version of the script by the seat of his pants). Thirty-seven years later, the composer John Williams’s ominous ostinato and Spielberg’s shots of the deep from the predator’s perspective still conjure a bold, lyric terror. But equally evocative is the swift portrait of a pleasant little pickup at a youthful beach party: a girl leads an inebriated pursuer on a merry chase as she strips, on the run, for a moonlit plunge, then attracts a finned pursuer. As soon as Brody sees her washed-up remains, he knows that she served as a midnight snack for a shark. The mayor (Murray Hamilton) and his cronies panic over the potential loss of July 4th business—and Brody is an insecure outsider, a New York City cop who thought this job would be a positive change. (The book was set on “Amity, Long Island”; the movie takes place on New England’s “Amity Island,” actually Martha’s Vineyard.) Only after two more fatalities does Brody close the beaches for good and take decisive action.”