Welcome to a special Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the iconic film about a giant fish that eats people, the movie that defined the cinematic blockbuster as we know it, the project that put Steven Spielberg on the map as arguably the greatest popcorn film director of all time, Jaws!
Few things can be said about this masterpiece that others haven't already said more eloquently, but I'll say them anyway, so humor me for a bit....
Jaws was of course originally a novel conceived by former news editor Peter Benchley, after reading stories of shark attacks off Long Island. As he put it, "I wondered what would happen if one of these things showed up and wouldn't go away." Three years later the novel was published and became an instant sensation, and film producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown snapped up the movie rights, ultimately hiring then 27-year-old Spielberg to helm the project. The youthful, adventurous Spielberg was just the right age and experience level for this massive undertaking; he didn't yet know how backbreaking it would be to film on the water - an infamously cruel and unpredictable setting - and to deal with an even more infamously unpredictable mechanical prop as the film's centerpiece.
"The shark is not working" became the all-too-familiar refrain of the troubled production, announced over the set intercom on a daily basis. Dubbed "Bruce" by the crew, the fake shark's constant mechanical failures forced Spielberg to shoot the rest of the film around it, inadvertently resulting in a much leaner and scarier film. The shark's presence is mostly suggested rather than shown, and the audience is forced to imagine its terrifying appearance.
From the harrowing opening scene, perhaps the scariest in the entire movie, we're shown the effects of the shark's brutal eating habits without seeing the animal itself. Stuntwoman/actress Susan Jane Backlinie as the shark's first victim Chrissy Watkins has arguably the most important acting role in the film. Her tone-setting performance is horrifyingly real, conveying the sheer terror and agony of being attacked by a Great White. Had she not delivered the goods in the film's prologue, the audience wouldn't so thoroughly buy the shark's efficacy as a monstrous sea beast. But deliver the goods she did; we jump and cringe with every scream and panicked breath. This scene is a masterclass in visceral acting, editing and suggestion.
For the next hour of the film we get a sense of the shark's awesome power as it tears down a pier (built to resemble the eyes and snout of a leviathan as the shark drags it toward intended prey), destroys boats, chews apart more victims, and terrorizes the beach community of Amity (perfectly brought to life by the island of Martha's Vineyard). Spielberg used a water-level camera to both suggest the shark's point of view and to thrust the audience against our will into the ocean with the defenseless swimmers. We feel as helpless as they are, without seeing the shark at all. It isn't until Chief Martin Brody, Matt Hooper and the modern-day pirate Quint sail off to find and kill the shark that we catch a proper glimpse of it, and by then we've so bought into this terrifying monster it only takes a few brief shots to capture our imagination. Spielberg's use of a jokey one-liner before the reveal is a stroke of genius. We're put off guard by the line "I can go slow ahead, come on down and chum some of this shit," and when the shark's head suddenly pokes up out of the water it's one of the all-time great jump scares.
But Jaws wouldn't be nearly as effective a horror film if Spielberg and his collaborators didn't first make us care about the characters. Chief Brody (a perfectly cast Roy Scheider) is an unsure hero, a figurative fish out of water who's only recently moved to Amity from New York City and still hasn't found his bearings. Brody hates the ocean but had become so disillusioned with the overwhelming crime in Gotham he needed a small town to look after instead. But his efforts to keep Amity's swimmers safe is thwarted at every turn by a mayor whose only concern is the season's tourism receipts (The film wisely omits the novel's subplots about mob involvement and Mrs. Brody's infidelity). Oceanographic scientist Matt Hooper (wisecracking Richard Dreyfuss) is a young pragmatist who's in love with sharks and is both fascinated and horrified by the gigantic fish laying siege to the island. But the film's greatest character for me is the Captain Ahab-like Quint (an Oscar-worthy Robert Shaw), the wizened Amity fisherman who hates sharks with every fiber of his being and can't wait to get his hands on this one. Quint is so gruff and off-putting even his two cohorts can't relate to him. Late in the film we're given a deep dive into his motivation in the form of an absolutely captivating speech about his experience on the USS Indianapolis, the ill-fated aircraft carrier sunk by the Japanese in 1945, after which hundreds of men awaiting rescue were picked off by sharks. This is the best scene in the film and should've earned Shaw an award nod.
Perhaps the film's biggest star though is the score by the legendary John Williams. The now-iconic two-note motif Williams devised to suggest the shark's simple, primal nature is used to such spectacular effect we're always aware when the shark is nearby just by the presence of the music. In fact at one point there's a shark sighting that turns out to be a prank, and subconsciously we know it's a false flag because the music is missing. Then a few minutes later we hear the familiar theme and the tension is ratcheted all over again. Spielberg referred to Williams' score as the film's greatest special effect, and it went on to win a well-earned Oscar, one of over fifty lifetime nominations for the master composer.
Jaws would become the first film to cross the $100 million mark at the box office and became the template for the summer blockbuster, followed two years later by the original Star Wars. It spawned three pretty bad sequels and countless imitators, some good like the first Alien film, many not-so-good like Piranha and Lake Placid. Like so many of us, I can't visit a beach without thinking of this film, and I can't watch the movie without wanting to take a boat trip. Spielberg's second theatrical film burst into the worldwide lexicon five decades ago and has never left. It is a classic example of art from adversity; had the shark's mechanics worked consistently we'd have been robbed of the film's mystery and restraint. Had Spielberg been an older, wiser and more experienced director the movie wouldn't have been so cutting edge. It was a perfect storm of just enough things going wrong that the end result turned out just right. I was in utero when my mother went to see Jaws in the theater, so in a way it's the first film I ever experienced. I watch this film every summer and like a great piece of music it never gets old.
I give Jaws **** out of ****. Obviously.
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