Jaws

UK Release Date. 26 December 1975

Certification. A

Running Time. 2 hours 4 mins

Director. Steven Spielberg
Cast. Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw.
Rating. 92%

Review.

With an estimated domestic return at the box office of $250 million, against an apparent production budget of $12 million, Jaws is universally credited as the first summer blockbuster [the film opened in Canada and the US on 20 June 1975]. 

The film also catapulted the then lesser-known director, Steven Spielberg from relative obscurity to a global audience. Spielberg would quickly follow the success of Jaws with the release of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and soon establish himself as one of the greatest storytellers of his generation. Jaws is most certainly one of the defining moments in Spielberg's career; on sheer cause and effect basis alone, it could be seen as the most important.

When Spielberg first agreed to direct Jaws, the young director was perhaps naively unaware of the challenges facing him in adapting Peter Benchley's best selling novel for the big screen. Today, with CGI technology, completing Jaws would be far less arduous, but filming took place in 1974, when special effects meant model work and crude (and unreliable) animatronics. 

From the simple premise - a great white shark terrorises the beaches of Amity Island - Jaws is a filmmaking masterclass. Spielberg delivers an engrossing, edge-of-your-seat thriller built on a very primal emotion - fear. Much of Jaws is an exercise in creating, and escalating, tension and Spielberg routinely punctuates the narrative with numerous innovative measures, e.g. the shark's eye view of swimmers, the Ben Gardner jump scare and the reverse dolly zoom used to create the effect of vertigo in the 'Get out of the water' scene. 

Initially, the villain of the piece isn't the great white shark; it's the face of bureaucracy, personified by Amity's Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), an official more concerned with the economic bottom line than with the possibility of further deaths. 

While Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) battles bureaucracy, the shark lurks in the background (or should that be the depths), ready to take over the role of principle antagonist when the time comes. Much like the old English proverb, 'necessity is the mother of invention' Spielberg does not reveal the creature. For the first hour of the film, the audience only glimpses the shark. Even after the shark makes its first dramatic experience, the camera does not dwell upon the creature. Only at the conclusion of the film when the shark crashes onto the deck of the Orca, are we treated to a lengthy look at the shark. From these scenes, it is blatantly obvious why the shark gets so little screen time - it looks fake. Really fake. 

Spielberg freely admits that, had the technology been around, he would have shown the creature earlier and more frequently. Ironically, this constraint results in one of the film's greatest strengths - the heightened suspense from keeping the shark hidden form the audience. Many directors have subsequently employed this 'less is more' technique, but few have employed the technique in such a successful manner. 

Another of the film's undoubted strengths is the stellar performances from the three lead actors;

• Roy Scheider at the height of his career in the 1970s with appearances in films such as Klute, The French Connection, Marathon Man, Sorcerer and All That Jazz, perfectly pitches the quintessential everyman, Sheriff Martin Brody. Yes, he's the Chief of Police, but Chief of Police in a sleepy, sedate seaside town, free from crime. Scheider brings a sense of humanity to the role, with his relatable flaws, "We know all about you, Chief. You don't go in the water at all, do you?" 
• Richard Dreyfuss, the least well-known of the three at the time, infuses marine biologist, Matt Hooper with charm and a dry wit to compliment his energy and passion for the subject matter. If Jaws resulted in a generation scared to swim in the open ocean, then Matt Hooper spawned a generation of marine biologists. I was one of them.
• But it is Robert Shaw that perhaps steals the show as the larger than life local fisherman, Sam Quint. Quint's recurring refrain, "Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies" is wholly infectious and builds camaraderie amongst the three crew members. This spirit of camaraderie is only heightened following Quint's sobering monologue as he recalls the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. The poignant "eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred sixteen men come out, and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945" is a harrowing piece of cinema.

John Williams' score is neither his best, nor his most rousing, but the now iconic theme is one of the most recognisable cues in the history of cinema. The reason is simple, it is singularly effective. Williams' score, the ominous, simplistic two-note theme is synonymous with the approach of the shark, evoking a reaction even when we don't see the blood-thirsty predator in the flesh.

A cultural phenomenon, Jaws' single biggest contribution to the film industry was proving how lucrative the summer release window could be. As a result, the major studios' release schedule follows very specific trends - studios typically unveil bid-budget blockbusters in the summer, roll out the awards contenders in the autumn, and the outliers are sprinkled throughout the first six months of the year.

Jaws' phenomenal success inevitably resulted in three sequels (each one more appalling than the one before) and numerous imitations of varying quality - The Deep, Orca: The Killer Whale, Piranha, Deep Blue Sea, Lake Placid, The Shallows, The Meg and the abject Sharknado. Steven Spielberg's original is undoubtedly the best and no film of this ilk has been able to eclipse Jaws. As the years go by, it seems increasingly unlikely that anything will ever come close. So "here's to swimmin' with bow-legged women" for a few more years.