Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Today marks the 50th anniversary of Jaws (1975), the pioneering modern blockbuster that broke box office records, launched Steven Spielberg into superstardom, made the great white shark an iconic movie monster, and spawned a whole sharksploitation subgenre.
Adapted by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb (with a bit of uncredited help, here and there, from Spielberg, John Milius, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, Howard Sackler and Robert Shaw) from Benchley's bestselling potboiler novel, Jaws began its troubled production in May 1974. Helmed by a 27 year-old director working on his first big budget project, Jaws ran into a series of problems that have themselves become Hollywood legend: constant problems with Bruce the mechanical shark, which forced Spielberg and DP Bill Butler to improvise, adopt a Hitchcockian restraint, and to shoot scenes from the shark’s point of view; Robert Shaw’s drinking binges; the seasickness, accidents and inclement weather that comes from shooting a movie on location on the ocean.
American Cinematographer writer Mik Cribbens was on hand to observe the shooting of the film’s climax, which he covered for a March 1975 article. After an afternoon of preparation, “Spielberg decided to go for the shot,” in Cribbens’ words.
He called, “Action” and he got a lot more than he called for. Steve, Roy Scheider, Dick Butler (Robert Shaw’s stuntman and no relation to Bill), Bill Butler, three camera crews and three cameras were all aboard the Orca II. When the shark came down on the boat, it looked like an explosion and for 30 seconds all hell broke loose. The weight of the shark caused the boat to fill up with too much water and it started to go down like a stone. I saw Roy Scheider dive into a mass of nail-filled pieces of wood splintered from the transom by the shark and did not see him come up for a long time. Other people were jumping clear of the boat and people on other boats were rushing to help them. There was much confusion and people were shouting, “Save the camera!” and “Save the lights!”
Principal photography wrapped in October 1974, more than 100 days behind schedule and millions of dollars above budget. Aided by Verna Fields’ editing and especially by John Williams’ Oscar-winning original score, a finely honed finished product emerged from tumultuous raw material, with that tumult adding a wave-swept and salt water-soaked authenticity to the nautical adventure onscreen.
Sometimes technical limitations can be virtuous limitations. Sometimes challenging circumstances push people to improvise, to make the best use of what they do have, to follow creative directions unavailable in a more favorable situation. This film is a perfect example.
In the words of critic Michael Sragow, “Spielberg himself says that if he’d had digital tools to make Jaws, he could have found a lot of ways to ruin it.”
An almost unprecedented wide release that led to a record-breaking box office gross.
Three Oscars as part of the best Best Picture slate in history.
Three sequels, none of which come anywhere close to the original's quality.1
An audio-animatronic shark scene on the Universal Studios Backlot Tour.
The 62nd greatest film of all time, according to the 2022 BFI/Sight and Sound directors' poll.
Fifty years on, Jaws has a secure place in film history.
The knock on Jaws, from a certain critical perspective, is the narrative that it along with Star Wars (1977) killed New Hollywood, that it marks a shift away from mature, morally ambiguous films towards toyetic, high concept blockbuster movies. That it represents the beginning of American cinema’s infantilization.
The reality is that high concept blockbusters were nothing new in 1975. We might remember the late sixties and early seventies for New Hollywood classics, but it was also the era of The Love Bug2 and Herbie Rides Again, George Lazenby and Roger Moore’s James Bonds, and a whole cycle of big-budget disaster movies spawned by the massive success of Airport (1970). We remember 1974 for Chinatown and The Godfather Part II; The Towering Inferno was that year’s box office champion. The Poseidon Adventure (1972), one of the New Hollywood era’s biggest box office hits, is about as high concept, as elevator pitchable as a movie could be.
If anything, Jaws and Star Wars offer both more artistry and more sheer craftsmanship than previous Hollywood blockbusters. If you revisit Jaws this anniversary weekend,3 as I plan on doing, you’ll notice a profusion of strong visual compositions, effective supporting and bit performances, funny little pieces of business, tastes of local New England flavor and of course the various moments of comedy and pathos and initial distrust and eventual male camaraderie from the trio of Roy Scheider’s Brody, Richard Dreyfuss’ Hooper and Robert Shaw’s Quint.
When we write about movies, we’re too often guilty of talking at a very abstract, conceptual, thematic level, rather than the accumulation of concrete, vivid details that form much of a film’s impact. Jaws is a film with memorable details, from Quint crushing a can of Narragansett Beer to Brody’s son imitating him at the dinner table.
“If the only scenes you remember are the film’s traumatic horrors,” as Michael Sragow writes in The New Yorker, “it’s a revelation to savor how much summery flavor and warmth and satiric humor the director and his writer wring from the setup.” He goes on to vividly describe that summery flavor:
Anyone who wants to know what it was like to vacation in a coastal town in the mid-seventies can start with “Jaws.” It’s somehow poignant to see normal-sized bodies of all ages (neither ripped nor morbidly obese) lolling on the sand while rock or classical music rolls in with the thin, endearing sound of transistor radios.
My last post was about the death of the late, great, Brian Wilson; this film benefits greatly from the contrast between its oceanic terror and the sunlit, at times almost Beach Boys-esque Americana of its beach scenes.
A film as popular as Jaws has of course attracted a plethora of interpretations, readings ranging from post-Watergate distrust of authority to the three protagonists as representing three different modes of masculinity.
My mind goes instead to the mythopoeic approach of Spielberg’s friend and colleague George Lucas. As many critics have pointed out, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is an ur-text for Jaws; Spielberg’s screenplay draft has Quint going to a movie theater to watch the 1956 film adaptation.4
Moby-Dick, the late Tony Tanner writes in his introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition, “is thick with references to myths and religions— classical, Hindu, Christian certainly, but most importantly Egyptian.” Writing in a period of western Egyptomania fueled by Jean-François Champollion’s translation of hieroglyphics via the Rosetta Stone, Melville took inspiration from a story he considered, per Tanner, to be the “Ur-myth:” the tale of Osiris, the “priest-king-god who sails the seas hunting Typhon, an aquatic monster.”
Sometimes a Hollywood blockbuster is the best route to an encounter with the mythic, the archetypal, the sublime, the primal; sometimes a killer shark movie can take you back through the watery realms of Melville and Hemingway, Homer and Winslow Homer, to Osiris and Typhon, to the fear and fascination of the ocean, to the quest to slay the monster.
Jaws: The Revenge (1987) at least has a few unintentionally hilarious Mystery Science Theater 3000-worthy moments.
1969’s second highest-grossing film at the domestic box office.
All four Jaws movies are on Peacock.
A scene cut from the final script due to rights issues.
Great reading! One of the most fascinating takeaways here is how constraints sparked the very tension that made Jaws iconic. The broken shark didn’t ruin the film. It created the film.
The making of Jaws is as interesting a story as the film itself, to me at least. And when you say that constraints breed creativity, I'm sure that must have been a big lesson to a young Spielberg. Think decades later to Jurassic Park and the slow, tense build up to introducing the T-Rex in all it's glory. I'm sure some of that came from how the shark was filmed, even if it wasn't intentional at the time.