Jaws (1975)

Tagline: “The terrifying motion picture from the terrifying number one best seller”
Running Time: 124 minutes

Film quality: 5/5
Gore Content: 2/5
Entertainment Value: 5/5
Originality: 4/5

Introduction

When Universal producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown independently read Peter Benchley’s ‘Jaws’ they could have had no idea that they were about to change the direction of cinema. Settling on the, at the time, unknown and still in his 20s Steven Spielberg to direct it was to prove a masterstroke of fortune that would lead to the creation of one of THE greatest films of all time. Plagued by trouble during production, escalating budgets, technical problems, re-writes and a bloated shooting schedule, this is a lesson in putting faith in a talented director who can work around problems and make the best of a situation.

In a nutshell…

A young girl is killed in a suspected shark attack at a seaside resort reliant on the tourist trade during the holiday season. As more bathers perish at the fins of a Great White Shark, the leviathan must be destroyed before it threatens the town’s livelihood and the lives of its residents and holidaymakers.

So what’s good about it?

When you think of ‘Jaws’ it’s nigh on impossible to shake the two musical notes that escalate and reverberate throughout the film, signalling the deadly menace and intent of Spielberg’s monster. John Williams’ score is simply incredible, so much so that it’s easy to forget that you don’t see the shark until well into the second half of the film! Its’ effectiveness is enhanced almost by mistake as, due to multiple problems with various mechanical sharks, the decision was taken relatively early to use the music as a replacement for the real thing. This decision worked out wonderfully, ratcheting up the tension to Hitchcockian levels and leaving us all with that deceptively simple, heartbeat-esque, rhythmic tone in our heads whenever we go for a swim!

Spielberg very nearly walked away from production, fearing he would be typecast, largely due to the similarity between this and his amazing debut TV movie ‘Duel’ – ironically the reason his interest was piqued in the first place. He has shown time and time again how good he is at building tension, suspense and relentless momentum with an eye for the set piece. I still remember the first time I saw this film and the scene that scared me most was the two fishermen looking to catch the shark at the end of a jetty (above, right). His use of substitution is just incredible. The music and the broken jetty both double for the shark as sound and vision, the panic in the two men’s voices as the driftwood gets closer and the music gets louder. I found it almost unbearable as an 8 year old, it gave me nightmares, despite the adrenalin release and ending on a jocular “Can we go home now” just to ease the tension.

In a sense that scene sums up the entire movie which is very much split into two halves. The first half sets the scene by dangling out the Sunday Roast as we see a number of kids and holidaymakers as bait for the shark. Then the film moves away from the jetty for the second half of the film out at sea as our three ‘odd trio’ characters of world weary Flint (a scene stealing Robert Shaw), marine biologist Hooper (a brilliantly vulnerable and understated, almost comic performance from Richard Dreyfuss) and our hero Chief Brody (Roy Scheider going against type as a modestly competent police chief).

This dynamic in the second half perfectly complements the carnage of the first. On the beach the solution is obvious, don’t go in the water, and it would be all too easy (as we saw in Joe Dante’s surprisingly good pastiche ‘Piranha’) to keep the film at the shore for maximum shock effect. But what Spielberg and co-writers Carl Gottlieb and Benchley do is take it away from that and create a microcosm of suspense and tension between three characters who all have different motivation…Quint’s in it for the money and challenge, Hooper is in it for the research and Brody simply wants to keep people safe. It also hems them in. If you’re in the water, just get out…but where do you go if you’re already in the water and miles from shore? It all becomes ominously claustrophobic when you’ve overfaced yourself and Brody’s ad-libbed “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” is a classic moment in cinema when reacting to our first proper glimpse of ‘Bruce’.

But let’s just take one scene in particular out of context, I’m talking of course about Quint’s Indianapolis monologue. Shaw is an accomplished writer as well as an actor and re-wrote the monologue to deliver one of the standout pieces of dialogue in any film. For a brief moment we forget about the menace outside and witness one of the characters internalise a struggle with an inner demon that influences his actions right up to the end of the movie. I challenge anyone to start up a conversation or put a crisp in their mouth during this speech, you simply can’t let yourself be distracted as you’re pulled into his world, his experience which you absolutely believe has happened to him and shaped the persona that he brings to the screen. Apparently Shaw worked with a local fisherman who taught him to walk and talk like a man with sea legs; Spielberg gave him a small part in the film as Ben Gardner, the character whose head pops out of the boat in the infamous ‘jump scare’ (above, right).

So much has been said about all of the various aspects of the film, it works on almost every level but its biggest legacy is that it served as a blueprint for the archetypal summer blockbuster. One of the first ‘high concept’ movies which can be described in a single sentence, it marked a move away from historical epics and sweeping romances to action-based movies aimed at a mass market. Though the formula has become more cynical over time, recycling itself (‘Armageddon’ and ‘Deep Impact’, ‘Independence Day’ and ‘War of the Worlds’), the huge amount of money thrown at advertising and its release as a summer movie, in the US at least (it was released in the Winter outside of the US and Argentina), continues to this day.

And what about the bad?

It’s almost the perfect blockbuster but, have nit, will pick! There is one scene that has always bugged me and I’ve never found an explanation for it. When Hooper carries out the autopsy of the young girl, the scene seems to cut to a shot of Hooper picking up the severed arm whilst in mid flow and he says “So this is what happens” before it cuts back to him carrying on his frantic autopsy. I can only assume it’s down to sloppy editing which is surprising as the rest of the film is so expertly put together. If anyone out there knows why this scene plays out the way it does then I’d be more than happy to be enlightened!

Any themes?

The book plays heavily on the class divide and, although this is largely excised, key elements remain. Quint is the tough, working class man with a chip on his shoulder, holding Hooper’s hands and telling him “You’ve been counting money all your life” whilst Hooper is the privileged, educated gentleman who has inherited his fortune and uses technology as his tools, replying to Quint “Hey, I don’t have to put up with this working class hero crap”. Brody, essentially classless in his role as police chief, acts as mediator between the two which means it must fall on him to destroy the shark to show the failing of the class system and its ultimate reliance on authority figures.

It’s also a classic horror about nature fighting back against humanity in the form of a giant and monstrous creature, a theme we’d seen many times before with the likes of ‘King Kong’. This runs alongside his own TV movie ‘Duel’ which pits an everyman against an unstoppable assailant, this time on dry land with a truck instead of at sea with a shark. Both films play on the primal fear of being hunted, reversing man’s natural role as the predator and showing up our own vulnerabilities, foreshadowed in the shot of the three men leaving on their quest with the boat framed in the jawbone of a long dead shark. The sound effect at the end of ‘Jaws’, as the remains of the shark sink to the bottom of the ocean, is an altered version of the noise the truck makes at the end of ‘Duel’ as it drives over the cliff top.

Release history

Other than the usual edits for language and gore to allow TV channels to show the film in the early evening (although even then it’s frequently shown without cuts), there has been very little censorship of the film. There are extended TV versions to allow US networks to pad out the running time to three hours with adverts but these simply reinserted deleted scenes that can be found on DVD.

However, the 30th anniversary edition does have one very odd cut for language. Close to the end, as Brody squeezes the trigger to kill the shark, his final line is shorted to “Smile you son of a…”. Very odd given that the film retains all other bad language and gore. The special edition VHS released in the UK in the early 90s was briefly withdrawn and recertified from a ‘PG’ to a ’12’. This is down to the documentary that followed the film which features the ‘F’ word and presumably wasn’t spotted…naughty BBFC!

Cultural impact

Massive in that, as mentioned earlier, it spawned the modern blockbuster. It also spawned a whole host of imitations, parodies and pastiches. It was most likely responsible for the shark vs zombie tussle in Lucio Fulci’s ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’, such was the propensity for Italian horror movies to shoehorn in anything that had gone down well in the US! Movies including ‘Piranha’, ‘Tremors’, ‘Alligator’ and ‘Orca the Killer Whale’ to name a few owe a huge debt of gratitude to ‘Jaws’.

One unpleasant result of the film is the public perception of sharks, particularly ‘Great Whites’, as man eaters when in fact most attacks, not that they’re common, are cases of mistaken identity. The creatures, which are incredible examples of evolution, have been demonised to the point of being listed as a vulnerable species. This decline in numbers has happened since the 70s which may be a coincidence but these beautiful, fearsome creatures only has two natural predators…killer whales and man.

Final thoughts

Despite being a family film, there is no doubting this features most of the tropes you would associate with a horror film so could conceivably be regarded as one of, if not THE most successful horror film of all time in terms of box office. It’s also a perfect example of relentless tension and taut direction to deliver appropriate scares and suspense levels approaching critical. In today’s era of CGI and mega bucks stars it sometimes takes a reflective look at where the modern blockbuster started to see that the best of them all had neither of those, now key, elements. They might not quite make them like that anymore but ‘Jaws’ is still essential viewing and remains as effective now as it was then BECAUSE of that fact.

Memorable Quotes

Brody: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Quint: “Here’s to swimming with bow legged women.”

Quint: “This shark, will swallow you whole.”

Quint: “Ten thousand dollars for me by myself…for that you get the head, the tail, the whole damned thing.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Alligator’, ‘Piranha’, ‘Deep Blue Sea’, ‘Tremors’, ‘Arachnophobia’