yendor1152 wrote:
Spielberg has never been better, and isn't this the movie that first featured the track-in/pull-back shot, when Brody realizes the shark has again attacked (when the kid is killed)?
Hitchcock developed it to visually evoke Jimmy Stewart's VERTIGO, though it didn't involve actors in frame. Mario Bava did something similar in LISA AND THE DEVIL, to imply a passageway 'opening up' between two buildings. Spielberg first used it in a remarkable shot in THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, elongating the space (and time, actually) between a rifleman and his quarry.

JAWS was, I'm pretty sure, the first time the technique was employed to skew viewers' spatial perception of a character in center frame.

- Jeff