‘Jaws’ delivers needed slap to face of America in our COVID-19 summer | David Ramsey
The terror of “Jaws” sticks with you, even when you wish it would go away.
You swim in the warm waters of the Atlantic on a glorious morning and then those movie-screen-size images of devoured bodies invade your mind, and suddenly the shore looks so inviting.
But the lasting and powerful message of “Jaws” is not to avoid sharks as large as a Winnebago. The message that matters, especially in our COVID-19 summer, is the requirement to do battle with a killer. It’s a message imprinted on my mind because of the magnificent, if brief, performance of Lee Fierro as an enraged, devastated mother.
“Jaws” first packed movie theaters 45 summers ago. Against all odds, it’s been a hit again this summer, playing at drive-ins across Colorado. It’s showing inside at the Regal Cinema on Interquest.
Sunday afternoon, I wore a mask and watched “Jaws” at Regal. Blood was gushing on screen and actresses and actors were shouting and gasping, but it was a quiet moment that carried the most power.
Police chief Martin Brody (Roy Schieder) knows a gigantic woman-eating shark prowls the shores of his small town, but surrenders to his money-obsessed, ugly-sport-coat-wearing mayor and leaves the beaches open for human bathing and, alas, shark dining. Soon, a young boy is eaten.
The next day, Brody celebrates the killing of a shark, but we all know it’s far too early in the movie for this tiny creature to be the murderous shark. The police chief smiles until he sees the enraged eyes of Mrs. Kitner (Fierro), mother of the deceased boy.
Fierro wears a traditional black veil as she slaps Brody full across the face. It’s the most meaningful slap in cinema history.
“You knew,” Kitner/Fierro says as tears spill. “You knew there was a shark out there. You knew it was dangerous, but you let people go swimming anyway. … My boy is dead. I wanted you to know that.”
Nicole Galland, a novelist, grew up on Martha’s Vineyard, where director Steven Spielberg shot “Jaws.” The shoot was scheduled for 55 days. Instead, the ultra-meticulous 27-year-old director stretched the shoot to 159 days. Galland watched much of the filming, and she was there when Fierro slapped Schieder.
Spielberg employed several island residents as performers in the movie. One was Galland’s grandfather, who portrayed the cowardly medical examiner. Another was Fierro.
Galland had not yet met Fierro when she saw the slap. Later, the women would become dear friends. Fierro spent her long career on Martha’s Vineyard, acting in dozens of plays and serving as mentor to thousands of young performers.
She was, Galland says, a superb actress.
“Lee was a mom,” Galland says. “She had five children, and she brought that to the scene. None of her children were eaten by sharks, thank God, but she showed what that would feel like to me if one of her kids were killed like this, and she showed it in this repressed New England upright way.
“She was amazing. She was one of those actresses who just became the person she was playing.”
Fierro was in the audience for Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. She labored as part of the forever-struggle for equal rights for all Americans. She raised a big family, and she leaped into the flesh of characters she created on stage. She was much more than her brief appearance in a blockbuster.
Her scowl and her veil and her angry whisper deliver a big-screen jolt this summer when we are tempted to ignore a fantastically and depressingly deadly adversary. Many Americans, like Brody and the endangered residents of the fictional island of Amity in “Jaws,” want to pretend danger and death will magically vanish. Pretending can be fun, but this no time to pretend. A big chunk of America could use a wake-up slap from Fierro in 2020.
Galland laughs as she remembers Fierro, her friend for decades.
“I wish you were talking to her,” Galland says.
I wish I were talking with Fierro, too.
But I can’t.
She died of COVID-19 in April.
Lee Fierro in her justly famous scene from “Jaws.”
“Jaws” poster art from 1975.
