Jaws was released on June 20, 1975 after quite possibly one of the worst productions in movie history. Crew members called the movie Flaws because of all the problems. Richard Dreyfus comically talks about the radios stationed all around Martha's Vineyard, where the movie was filmed, with a production assistant repeatedly saying, "The shark is not working. Repeat. The shark is not working." Mother nature, technical problems and boaters in the background hamper the production.
When pre-production began, producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown had to fire the original director who didn't know the difference between a shark and a whale. They brought in Steven Spielberg, who had directed a TV movie, Duel, and one feature movie, The Sugarland Express, as well as some TV episodes directing. Spielberg was the new kid on the block, surrounded by veteran filmmakers who probably didn't like some 20-something telling them what to do.
The production could've ended Spielberg's career if it hadn't been a hit. Spielberg, himself, said he had apprehension about being thrown into the ocean by the film crew on the last day of filming that he set everything up and allowed an assistant director to handle it and left town.
Jaws became a blockbuster and it scared people out of their seats and more importantly out of a favorite summer past-time swimming in the ocean and hanging out at the beach. The days of Annette Funnicello and Frankie Avalon twisting their hips to that rock and roll music was over.
A horror movie, which Jaws is, works best when it takes something we take for granted and shows how vulnerable we are. Jaws is about taken for granted the waterworld that makes up planet Earth. There's a whole different world beneath the water and we don't know much.
It's ironic that the fishermen from the suburbs who go fishing for the shark don't know anything about chumming or when Dreyfus' oceanographer Matt Hooper tells them they killed a tiger shark, one of them looks at him confused and says, "A what?"
We knew little about sharks. We saw them as violent apex predators devouring anything in their way. Ironically, great white sharks, one of which is the titular character in Jaws, don't have an affinity much for human flesh. They prefer sea lions. Most shark attacks are by curious sharks mistaking bathers in the ocean for their food. If they bite an arm or leg off, the taste will make them spit it back out. Bad luck for the bather who could die, but their animals and their natural instincts are to eat.
What works in Jaws and what hasn't worked in the numerous sequels and imitators is that it presents suspense. Alfred Hitckcock said if the viewers know a bomb is under a table and it doesn't explode, that's suspense. Take for instant another scene where some wannabe fishermen tie a chain around a dock with a hook with a roast attached. We don't see the shark but it pulls out the chain, causing the dock to break and the fishermen nearly become shark food, but they don't, because we see part of the dock changing directions from away shore toward shore, but surprise to surprise, there is nothing but the dock being led in by the tide.
The technical problems with the shark animatronics led Spielberg and the production crew to show less and it fits with the understanding that we don't know what is going on. Quint, the professional fisherman hired to track and kill the shark, shoots the shark with cables attached to barrels to keep it from going under much as well as to track it. Seeing the barrel pop up shows us that the shark is near.
There is also John Williams' "da-dum-da-dum" score that is simple but terrifying. Like the Halloween theme by John Carpenter, it is able to terrify us by its simplicity.
Finally, there's characters we care about. Hooper is the rich college-boy who thinks just because he's gotten his feet wet, he knows all he needs to about sharks. There's Quint, the veteran fishermen who has a hatred of sharks that we learn is from incidents that happened following the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II. Finally, there's Martin Brody, the street-smart cop trained in the mean streets of New York City, who has wanted to move his family to the small island town of Amity in New England. During one scene, Brody walks, doesn't drive, down to the local store. I like this scene because it shows the small-town feel that Brody and others want.
Unfortunately, Brody is being pressured by the mayor of Amity played by Murray Hamilton, and other civic leaders who think the death of a female youth by the shark was a boat accident.
Actually, the movie opposed to the book, downplays the severity of the pressure Brody, whereas in the book, the civic leaders are in debt to the Mafia for building Amity and need summer dollars to pay off the Mafia and go so far as killing Brody's cat in front of his children. Brody's wife also has an affair with Hooper, who is more sleazy and dies a horrible death. Hooper was supposed to die in the movie but some actual footage of a real shark attack a cage changed that.
The movie works because when Brody says the iconic line, "We're going to need a bigger boat," he is not referring just to the shark but also the egos of Brody, Quint and Hooper on the boat as they battle the shark. Reportedly, Shaw and Dreyfus didn't get along on set and Spielberg had them use that.
The success of Jaws led to many imitators, Orca, Tentacles, Piranha, and Great White (or The Last Shark) which was sued by Universal for plagiarism and can't legally be shown in America for more than 30 years. You can find bootlegs online.
There were the sequels. All you need to know about Jaws 2 is that the tagline "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water" is better than anything else in the movie, which slowly turned into a dead teenager slasher movie. Also, you wonder why would the civic leaders act so stupid a second time.
Then there was Jaws 3-D, which should've made people not like SeaWorld as much as Blackfish. The movie is laughably bad but enjoyable. Jaws:The Revenge, on the other hand, is so bad, it defies everything, such as people having flashbacks to memories they didn't witness, the notion that you can have your arm bitten off and not going into shock or to be gushing blood, and probably the climax in which a shark rises up on its back fin and roars. I was 10 when I saw this and even then, didn't believe it.
Worse, Jaws presented many myths of sharks, forcing people to savagely hunt them. Peter Benchley, who wrote the book and is credited as a co-writer, spent the latter part of his life advocating conservation of sharks.
The hunting of sharks led to changes in the ecosystem which have been blamed on more shark attacks as the killing of sharks led to an abundance of sea lions and other foods, which led to an abundance of more sharks.
Now, there's Shark Week, which was always a favorite when it began, but now, has been hit with criticism for false documentaries and misleading the public on the dangers of sharks. Yes, sharks are dangerous, but taking a step out your front door and getting stung by a bee can be dangerous to many.
Jaws was just a movie, a great movie, but a movie nonetheless, a world of make-believe on a fictional island detailing fictional people doing fictional things. Great white sharks hardly grow to be 25 feet long and Quint's retelling of the Indianapolis sinking was only partially accurate. Many sailors died from exposure, and the sharks fed on their dead bodies.
For the most part, Jaws changed a lot. It turned a film-school kid from the midwest into one of the major Hollywood players for the past 40 years. And many people said that while it may have driven dentists and accountants from the same midwest area Spielberg was raised to hunt and kill marine life, it also encouraged more people to educate themselves on marine life and hopefully, we have a new generation of shark conservation.
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