Favorite Scenes of All Time: #10-Quint Revisits the Indianapolis (Jaws)

Quints' speech about the USS Indianapolis is (in my mind at least) the greatest monologue ever caught on film, but not for the reasons you may think. Yes, the scene is brilliant in the fact that the simple act of a guy talking manages to be mesmerizing, creepy, and legendary all at the same time, but it's the things you don't really notice about the scene that makes it stand out above all other monologues in film history.

As Quint delves into the ghosts that have haunted him since World War II, we begin to glimpse into the dark obsession that will eventually lead him to his demise, made even more terrifying by the fact that he knows this will likely be the outcome of his hunt. In doing so Spielberg  makes Quints' obsession transform him into a modern day incarnation of Captain Ahab from Moby Dick, so whether you know it or not the film has just made a literary link that can resound quietly and effectively with the audience.

Not only is Shaws' delivery brilliant, but something that should be noted is that this scene is largely improvised. Everyone knows the nightmare that "Bruce" the shark caused the film, and filming this scene was just a way for Spielberg to buy time for the maintenance crew to get her up and running again. The fact that this man could pull this out and create a scene that will go down in history pretty much on a whim is a testament to the acting skills of Robert Shaw. The occasional shots back to Brody and Hooper show them just as transfixed and terrified by this dark story as we the audience are.

They say that a scene is 60% music and 40% what's happening on screen (we will further discuss this in next week's scene recap), but in this film the only music we hear is a soft, haunting classical that doesn't even enter until about halfway through the scene. This delivery is so brilliant, so well shot, and so timeless however, that I believe it would be just as effective and haunting if there had been no music at all!

There may be other, better monologues out there in film, but the combination of Spielberg's direction, Shaws' performance, and the overall tone of this scene places it as my personal favorite in film history.