By Valerie Kalfrin
Signature Reads, July 4, 2014
Sunbathers pack the beach, practically butting elbows under striped cabanas while boats patrol the nearby water. No one dares breach the surf until one brave soul ventures forward, triggering a surge of swimmers and waders, determined to enjoy their fun in the sun … until a fin pokes above the water.
Beach scenes abound in films, but Steven Spielberg’s 1975 adaptation of Peter Benchley’s Jaws cemented itself in cinematic history by being set on the Fourth of July. Filmmakers often use parades and fireworks to heighten suspense and romance – a la “The Fugitive” and “To Catch a Thief” – but linking to our nation’s birthday itself adds a particular resonance. It invests us in the story personally. Sure, a great white shark stalking Amity Island is terrifying, but its holiday attack (after a cardboard fake-out) ratchets up the tension, the horror – and the umbrage.
“It’s all psychological,” says Amity’s mayor (Murray Hamilton) as he argues to keep the beaches open against the wishes of Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider). “You yell barracuda, everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.”
Evoking this most American of American holidays is a universal call to empathy. Sometimes it works; sometimes it’s ham-fisted; but it’s intended for emotional impact, be it patriotism, honor, justice, grandeur, even righteous indignation. It’s one reason Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, and Will Smith don’t fight an alien invasion on Flag Day.
Here are five other films that, like “Jaws,” use Independence Day to spark a response.
“Born on the Fourth of July” (1989)
Director Oliver Stone’s take on Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic’s autobiography won Stone an Oscar for Best Director – and includes two evocative parade scenes. During the opening credits, young Ron sits atop his father’s shoulders, waving a flag to the strains of a marching band. “Look, Daddy, the soliders!” he says as the men around him snap to attention, saluting the veterans of earlier wars. One has no arms; his shirt sleeves flap with his steps. Another in a wheelchair winces at the crackles of fireworks. Later in the film, after Ron (Tom Cruise) returns from serving in Vietnam with the Marines, he waves from a convertible in the same hometown parade, trying not to recoil from the fireworks’ popping like gunfire. The spectators, meanwhile, flip Ron and the other vets obscene gestures and peace signs.
“The Pride of the Yankees” (1942)
This film about legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, who died at thirty-seven from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, reenacts the team’s 1939 Fourth of July tribute to the ballplayer at his retirement. Gary Cooper fills Gehrig’s shoes – with the real Babe Ruth looking on – and leaves not a dry eye in the house delivering a rewrite of Gehrig’s actual remarks. Gehrig actually told the Yankees Stadium crowd at the start, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.” Here, it becomes the last line of the speech and the film, giving it greater poignancy. The American Film Institute voted it thirty-eighth on its list of100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time.
“Zodiac” (2007)
Director David Fincher’s adaptation of Robert Graysmith’s book about the San Francisco-area serial killer of the late 1960s and early 1970s starts off with the illicit anticipation of lovers’ lane. Darlene Ferrin (Ciara Hughes) and Mike Mageau (Lee Norris) sit in her car, waiting for revelers with fireworks to move along. She notices he’s wearing several shirts. “You’re cold on the Fourth of July?” she teases. They’re not alone for long before another car screeches down the road and parks behind them. The driver gets out and shines a light in their eyes. “Man, you really creeped us out,” Mike says as the man approaches, just before the killer opens fire.
“Live Free or Die Hard” (2007)
Snakebit-but-reliable hero Detective John McClaine (Bruce Willis) takes down a cyber-terrorist (Timothy Olyphant) attacking the nation’s infrastructure in this thriller set during the Fourth of July weekend and culminating in Washington, D.C., chaos. Based on the Wired magazine article “A Farewell to Arms,” the film co-stars Justin Long and Kevin Smith as hackers who help the old-school McClaine. Audiences and critics gave it favorable marks, noting Willis’s “Bogart-with-a-smirk charisma has aged gracefully” and calling it “an enjoyable pop projection of post-9/11 anxiety.”
“Avalon” (1990)
Writer-director Barry Levinson’s saga of a Polish-Jewish family in America during the start of the twentieth century captures the delight and dazzle of the July 4 holiday through the eyes of an immigrant. Young Sam Krichinsky is enchanted by a twirling Statue of Liberty in a store window, a man dressed as Uncle Sam, and sparklers as his older self (Armin Mueller-Stahl) recalls in a voiceover: “There were lights everywhere! What lights they had! It was a celebration of lights! I thought they were for me …. The sky exploded, people cheered, there were fireworks! What a welcome it was, what a welcome!”