James R | On 29, Jun 2022

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Roy Scheider, Murray Hamilton, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw
Certificate: PG

“You’ll never go in the water again.” “See it before you go swimming.” “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Some movie quotes and taglines are instantly recognisable, but Jaws has more than most. That in itself says all you need to about the influence and long-standing brilliance of Steven Spielberg’s thriller, a creature feature that forged the template for the summer blockbuster as we know it.

Based on Peter Benchley’s novel, it tells the age-old story of a shark terrorising a small coastal town in the USA, a premise that saw the book snapped up by the movie’s producers before it had even been published. The high-concept is at the heart of the film’s strengths, with Steven Spielberg serving up a stripped-down thriller that doesn’t over-embellish where it might and only delivers exactly what’s needed. That means the character role call is as lean as its plotting: on the one hand, there’s police chief Martin Brady (Roy Schneider), who immediately closes the town’s beaches when a woman is attacked. On the other, there’s Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), who insists the beaches stay open to keep the town’s tourist income safe. And so the bodies begin to stack up, and Brady winds up teaming up with marine biologist Hopper (Richard Dreyfuss) and shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) to track down the great white menace.

The book was more complex with an affair between Hopper and Brody’s wife (Lorraine Gary), but Spielberg’s take keeps things lean and mean, with the moral tensions between Brady and the mayor already enough to be getting on with. That timely tale of corrupt authorities dismissing the wellbeing of citizens still resonates today – but what’s really remarkable is that the technical terror still functions like a well-oiled machine as well.

DoP Bill Butler caught the world’s attention with his iconic dolly zoom of an alarmed Brody on the beach, but he’s one of a team that’s uniformly at the top of their game, from editor Verna Fields (American Graffiti, What’s Up, Doc?) keeping things clipped and pacy to John Williams’ iconic score that found dread swimming between two threatening notes – amplified by Spielberg’s decision to avoid showing the shark for as long as possible, relying on buoys and other such devices to suggest its scary, unseen presence.

The cast make sure that their band of incompatible fellows overcoming their differences to work together is a stirring sight to witness, but whether you take the film as a creature feature, an exploration of masculinity or a political fable, there’s no denying that it evidently struck a chord with audiences – made for under $10m, Jaws became the first film to break $100m at the box office. Was it a result of the marketing blitz that preceded its release? The fact that Universal took the bold step of releasing it in June 1975? Either way, it set the example for all summer blockbusters to follow. More than 40 years on, it’s testament to the film’s legacy that people keep going back to watch it – and even if they do go in the water again afterwards, they probably look over the shoulder first.

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