USS INDIANAPOLIS
“That's the USS Indianapolis,“ mumbles Quint as he points to a scar on his arm; a tattoo he had removed a long time ago. The very name stops Hooper's laughter. The jovial mood is lost and the men's drunken, one-upping exchange of stories about their shark-inflicted wounds abandoned. A look of pained understanding now on his face, Hooper can only say: “You were on the Indianapolis?” So begins a monologue by the grizzled, briny and fanatical shark hunter Quint in Jaws (1975), a chilling three and a half minutes that have gone down in cinema lore.
At the core of the scene was a real ship, a heavy cruiser sunk by the enemy in World War II after completing the most top-secret of missions. And that was just the beginning of a traumatic ordeal, the worst disaster in US naval history. While not everything said by Quint – played to perfection by Robert Shaw – was factually accurate, the scene captured the tragedy with harrowing authenticity. It got survivors who saw Steven Spielberg's would not be forgotten.
