A fishy tale

The movie, charmingly dismissed within the disc’s extras by writer Peter Benchley as “a story about a fish,” wears its history well. Nominated for best picture in 1975, but losing out to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, it went on to win Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Score. All three aspects are showcased brilliantly by this new edition.

There's something in the water

Familiarity hasn’t seen the yarn lose any of its bite either. It still thrashes along, seducing you with character development long before filmdom’s most unconvincing predator swims into frame (yes, you still will jump).

Whatever floats your boat

Richard Dreyfuss remains intensely likeable as the shark expert; Robert Shaw’s Ahab-like shark hunter provides the film with a gritty centre, while Roy Scheider is the magnetic everyman seemingly drowning in a mounting tide of salty horror. The title may have lost a little lustre when it turned into an increasingly bonkers franchise, but this original cast remains a class act. All of which is more than can be said for the extras assembled for this release.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking"

If you’ve have Jaws on DVD, much of the supplemental material will be familiar. There’s the feature-length The Making of Jaws documentary (made in the mid-nineties and seen previously on the 30th Anniversary DVD release), a chunk of uncurated outtakes and deleted scenes, a set visit report by Iain Johnson (best known for helming the BBC’s Film show after Barry Norman left) and a gallery of storyboards, production photographs and marketing material.

A couple of rods

The presentation of these latter items is woeful, centred as they are within a diminutive floating frame, centre-screen. They are so small and low-res as to be unreadable; why they too couldn’t have been rescanned into HD is a mystery.

Don't forget to floss

The disc’s big new attractions comprise a short piece on the restoration project itself (interesting enough), and the 2007 documentary The Shark Is Still Working. On the plus side, this independently-produced 101 minute love letter to Bruce & Co. is packed with welcome anecdotes, interviews and insights into the movie and its subsequent legacy.

On the debit side, it looks awful – a low-res non-anamorphic YouTube escape that appears a lot more tired than its vintage might indicate. I had to fiddle with my TV’s aspect ratio/zoom settings just to get an acceptably framed image.

Verdict

So while Jaws Blu-ray debut isn’t quite the catch it might otherwise have been, the sheer quality of the restoration still makes it worth fishing for. ®

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