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Alfred Hitchcock's Jaws Create Suspense

Decent Essays

Jaws is a 1975 American thriller text composed by Steven Spielberg. Jaws tells the story of a Great White Shark terrorizing the small island community of Amity. Now considered one of the greatest shark thrillers ever made, Spielberg has followed in Alfred Hitchcock’s footsteps through using many of his thriller concepts in Jaws.

Jaws demonstrates that thriller texts are combined with a variety of different codes and conventions. Whilst trying to create suspense in Jaws, Spielberg was using a strategy used by Alfred Hitchcock. "A bomb is under the table, and it explodes, that is surprise, the bomb is under the table but it does not explode, that is suspense." (Alfred Hitchcock,) You do not see the shark for most of the movie therefore Spielberg is leaving the shark ‘under the table’. Many of its appearances in the later part of the …show more content…

The musical piece represents a shark chasing or creeping up on its prey. Music and silence is often used to form tension, to scare the audience. Non-diegetic sound helps by building extra tension or by setting a mood. For example, the dramatic, non-diegetic sound put over the top of the title classification scene, helps to build tension for the audience. This is due to fact that the music represents the shark, therefore, when the music comes on again during the movie, the audience knows the shark is coming. The producers of Jaws were able to bring fear to the audience through the location they have set the text in. Jaws was set in Amity which is a secluded island which is surrounded by water, this is effective because when the shark attacks, the people in the town feel isolated and vulnerable. Furthermore, it makes the people in the town feel trapped due to the island being enclosed by water. This heightens the fear the audience has for the town as they the viewers can see there is not a way

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