The Conflict Of Jaws

At its core, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film, Jaws, is a horror movie. Though the shark may seem like the primary antagonist of the film from this, as it literally eats people, such a claim would ignore the role of Amity Island’s Mayor Vaughn, as portrayed by Murray Hamilton. In the first half of the movie, Vaughn is constantly at odds with Chief Brody, wanting to push his own agenda of making money from tourism during the summer. In seeing Vaughn as another antagonist, another conflict that’s not just the one between the shark and the town emerges. In order to be able to kill the shark, Brody must first be able to “defeat” the powerful Vaughn. By looking at the acting and staging in scenes that show interactions between Brody and Vaughn, a story of its own emerges, one where the forces of morality are pushed around, but ultimately triumph over the callous, self-centered bureaucracy. The conflict between Brody and Vaughn is established fairly quickly towards the beginning of the movie. The entire scene is mainly composed of one longer shot, from 11:48 to 13:32, …show more content…
The beginning of the shot mirrors the incident on the transport from earlier, but here, the roles are reversed, as Brody aggressively approaches Vaughn and then grabs him by the arm and drags him to a private area where he closes a curtain. There seems to be a tracking shot used, as the whole time, the two are framed in roughly a close shot. Once there, the camera pans, as Vaughn enters the left side of the frame into the foreground while Brody stays in the center middleground. This is arguably a two-shot, as Brody is still in more of a close up (but it’s hard to tell because he bends down a little) and Vaughn is in a close-up. A few seconds later, Vaughn moves over from the left side of the frame to the right side, while Brody strongly argues for the hiring of