The movie landscape as we know it would not exist without Jaws. That is a statement without judgement, the popular status of Jaws as the original summer blockbuster may be used to critique the effect of its progeny as much as commend, but it is still a true fact that the movie industry and movie culture would be vastly different today and at any point in the last several decades were it not for this one shark movie that happened to capture the world by storm fifty years ago this month. The phenomenon of Jaws though is often separate from the movie itself, which in spite of its records set for the time and outsize impact on the direction the movie business has pursued ever since, would have been a great movie regardless of these effects.
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And yet they do matter. They are the reason we are still talking about Jaws five decades on, the reason why Steven Spielberg -who honestly assumed during its famously troubled production that it would be the last movie he would be permitted to make- is the uncontested titan of popular film directors. And it is the reason the movie is consistently rediscovered, studied, reappraised and beloved by subsequent generations of audiences. Jaws changed the world and that can never really be obscured in discussing its legacy.
But such a legacy would mean nothing if the movie itself wasn’t so good, if it wasn’t so powerful and accessible (and let’s be honest, simple) in a way that it is easy to approach and easier to enjoy. That isn’t so true of a lot of its contemporaries of 1970s cinema, especially so the further away we get from it and the seemingly more lacklustre people’s tastes become. Yet Jaws still stands tall, it still holds up, for many it is still as effective in exactly the same manner it was in 1975. Not only the original blockbuster but the original four-quadrant blockbuster, it remains a singularly great and compelling movie for reasons often detached from those that fed into its intense popularity. But reasons that only vindicate and make richer that popularity.
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Though it is often alienated from the New Hollywood movement for the fact that the blockbuster format it popularized eventually eclipsed the auteurist bent of popular cinema when this era came to a close at the end of that decade, Jaws is not simply the first mindless popcorn movie and does actually exist within the same deeper social and political frameworks of the kinds of films being made then by Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, and Hal Ashby. They have just been diminished in terms of the film’s value over time. People talk about the shark and the action and the horror, and while each of these are effective, they are almost novelty elements for the movie. And certainly if Jaws came out for the first time today (ignoring its role in creating our movie atmosphere of today), it would almost certainly not be a hit. It is slower and not punchy enough -and we barely even see the killer shark for most of it.
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Spielberg’s suspense on this movie is of course very Hitchcockian in nature -it was the approach he had going in that was expounded tenfold by the famous practical necessity of keeping the malfunctioning mechanical shark obscure or hidden, rendering its effect as a phantom terror all the more potently. It’s presence had to be communicated in more inventive ways, something it is hard to see any contemporary blockbuster adopting as a method of suspense. People want the thing the movie is sold on, so it better be front and centre. And perhaps that comes from an industry misunderstanding that a crucial part of what makes Jaws so gripping and still fascinating to dissect, are the characters and themes. The shark lures everyone to the water, but it is not the thing that keeps them there.
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It’s perhaps not talked about enough how the movie lucked into a really remarkable cast to ground the film. And not just in terms of its major stars, but the whole town of Amity Island feels alive because it is populated by real people -and indeed a lot of the extras were locals or genuine visitors to Martha’s Vineyard where the film was shot. All through the movie we see honest characters who seem to naturally belong in their environment, a rarity even for Spielberg afterwards. And we remember them, like the mustachioed Latino captain smoking a cigar on his boat with a dog, or the shark hunter who has the greatest reaction to first hearing about a tiger shark. Murray Hamilton looks like a skeevy small town mayor, Lee Fiero as Mrs. Kintner like a genuine New England mom struggling to process her tragedy.
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But as the 70s did best, the main actors felt like organic people too. Roy Scheider by this time naturally fit the bill of a cop -he was already a victim of some typecasting here since his Oscar-nominated role as Gene Hackman’s sidekick in The French Connection. However Martin Brody is not the tough guy cop he’d previously played, he is a man with real principles and some crippling anxieties around being both an outsider to Amity and being afraid of water. Scheider plays the part of audience surrogate well and there are some tremendous subtleties elsewhere in his performance of Brody, particularly around any time he lets his attitude slip during his time on the boat. And of course the character functions as the perfect middleweight between ideological opponents Quint and Hooper. Richard Dreyfuss as the latter is exuberant and the sharp-witted source of humour for the film. Having really only just been discovered by George Lucas for American Graffiti, he is the youthful counterculture representative in the film, frequently sticking it to the mayor and the other dolts around town and doing a really charismatic job of it. Far more transformative though is Robert Shaw as Quint, the well-respected English character actor taking on and reinventing the old American sea-dog archetype. It’s not just the accent but the whole meticulous obsessive demeanour that is eye-catching. This is a personality you cannot turn away from, and Shaw both has ample fun with the role and a focused intensity. And of course the standout comes at the USS Indianapolis monologue, one of the most gripping and perfectly modulated speeches in movie history -and famously (though depending on which history you read) largely a product of Shaw himself, who really ought to have won an Oscar for its delivery alone.
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Together the trio make for an exquisite anchor, and especially in the ways their characters’ personalities perfectly compliment one another and draw larger more interesting points on class and masculinity. The movie makes no secret that Hooper is very well-off -he has the resources to self-fund his own research and he has clearly received a privileged, first-rate education. These in spite of his hippie attitude towards authority, which seems to come from a mindset of intellectual superiority. It’s fun to see Hooper mock the fishermen in dangerously overcrowded boats or comment on him and Brody being the only sensible people on the island, but there is a smugness there too which of course is picked up on by and grinds the gears of Quint, who derisively calls him “college boy”. Hooper claps back -not needing this “working class hero crap” and there is a very clear wedge drawn between them based in status and ideology. They become avatars for study vs. instinct when it comes to dealing with sharks, though archetypes that can balloon into any number of other contexts where education and class cross paths with circumstance and material experience. Brody the moderate is made a more effective protagonist as a result of being at equal distance between the two: a relatively educated middle-class kind of guy, but firmly grounded. Both an outsider to the people of Amity and one who is on their level. And his role as that perfect middle-ground is exemplified in how he kills the shark in the end with an act that seems to combine both Quint and Hooper’s methods of dealing with it.
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In tandem with this, Brody is also the median of three facets of masculinity represented by each member of this unlikely trio, with Quint as the more tough and grizzled archetype and Hooper as the dweeby intellectual. And yet Brody is cast in meeker relief to both of them via his fear of water, overcoming it being a focal point of his character development. He is also excluded from his colleagues’ masculinity in the scars debate -symbolic of how he hasn’t been in the trenches of danger the way either of them have. He also, unlike them, was ignorant to the story of the USS Indianapolis, prompting the necessity of Quint to share his experience. But the story sobers him, and he is in a way on this mission to be hardened. Quint is derisive towards Hooper about being a ‘city boy’ -but Hooper has had a fair bit of experience with sharks in the open. Brody is far more the fish out of water. But it goes back to that class rootsiness of Brody in other areas -including his local status of authority with the police- that has Quint respecting “Chief” more. It’s a fascinating theme that underlines a lot of the interactions between these characters, as both Brody and Hooper endeavour in some way to prove their masculinity to Quint -especially Hooper constantly clapping back at Quint and his generalizations of him; the shark cage idea might be at least a little motivated by it. Though by the same measure it is interesting to see the exercise in male bonding that the expedition is -obviously most prominent in the below decks sequence where the drunk guys let their guards down, and Quint and Hooper can see a little past their differences. But there is also a conveyed sense of freedom, especially for Brody, whose personality is notably a little more harsh and abrasive than it was on land around merely his wife, kids, and the mayor. For some of the hostility, there is a sense of fun adventure that quietly appeals to all three men, and could speak perhaps to Brody’s willingness to brave his fear for it. Really, there’s little honest reason the chief of police had to be involved with this hunt, beyond some sense of personal masculine obligation.
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Another very real and consistently potent theme of Jaws through the decades is its deplorable mayor and the town’s capitalist pursuit of profit at the expense of human lives. And it is important to note that while the face of this perspective -that tourist dollars are worth risking a shark attack or two- is Mayor Vaughn, he’s also been interpreted as the singular scapegoat when that is not the case. We see very clearly that the town council is just as much up in arms at the notion of closing the beaches and that Vaughn responds primarily to their emotions. It’s easy to critique an evil politician ignoring the dangers, but Jaws points out it is in fact a systemic thing -a local populace just as mush under the sway of the moneyed interests for their tourist-dependent home. And it is as critical to bear that in mind as much as it is telling to note how comparable Mayor Vaughn’s attitude and rhetoric is to many a liberal and right-wing politician today concerned about the enigmatic movement of the economy more than materially supporting citizens during tough times. How careless has Amity’s history of mayors been in terms of social outreach that the townspeople are so terrified that the prospect of the beaches being closed on the Fourth of July means they will struggle to get by? In any case, their pressure and the actions of the mayor are framed in a pretty negative light -and though it is basic greedy villain shit on the surface, it actually makes for one of Spielberg’s stauncher political commentaries. I would argue especially now it has gained back that political meaning -in this era where previous signs of cartoonish evil have re-entered the mainstream in a political class that fears no consequences. Every local election in the U.S. and Canada probably has a Mayor Vaughn running and constituents who would gladly support his feckless capitalism -and in either case they wouldn’t be anywhere near the worst of the bunch.
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Jaws makes this point effectively, and does well to emphasize a lot of these richer subtexts that transcend the shark hunt of it all and make it genuinely immortal as a movie. But it also achieves this through sheer intensity of skill. Spielberg's craft is perfectly formed even at such a remarkably young age, his comfort behind the camera eminently palpable in what is in front of the camera: his use of wides and his classic oners as opposed to shot-reverse shot framing during conversations, giving scenes dynamic luxury and allowing actors to better carry them, and his instinct to pan rather than cut where possible. Famously of course, the Orca leaves Amity framed by a giant pair of shark jaws. More famously in the first beach scene, you have his inspired use of a split dioptre to reflect the two planes of focus in Brody's point-of-view and the iconic dolly zoom when the kid is attacked -perhaps the greatest illustration of that sinking feeling of sudden dread ever to grace the screen. Everyone knows the story of how difficult the shoot was and how the shark didn't work, but all that considered Spielberg hides any seams and uses the shark incredibly well. Alluding to it was always the better way to emphasize its terror in build-up, but obscuring it worked wonders too -whether it's the slight underwater glimpse we get when it pulls the lifeguard off his boat or the panning shot across the Orca after its first appearance out at sea, demonstrating with profound immediacy its scale next to that of the tiny boat. Spielberg has long-been a good problem solver, likely from the education he got on Jaws in both the production itself and in Verna Fields’s editing room. And let's not forget the smooth cut from Brody's last line to the shark and its explosion: a perfectly executed fist-pump moment like few that exist in modern blockbusters.
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There are other examples you could point to regarding Spielberg's direction of Jaws and aspects of the movie's themes, its writing, its depths to showcase the relevance and power beneath the surface of its populist resonance. But there are too many to go into and each with their own larger discussions -there’s a reason this movie has been so thoroughly and thoughtfully analyzed over the years. It is important to consider these because that label Jaws has carried as the original blockbuster (which isn’t entirely a true one) has as the years have gone by become a mixed signifier. And yet while there are some who have bemoaned Star Wars -successor to Jaws and often co-parent of that original blockbuster designation- both for what it was and what it supposedly wrought on the cinematic art form, nobody regrets the existence of Jaws. Pauline Kael was a fan, and she rarely saw a blockbuster afterward she didn’t hate. And indeed many would agree it is unfair to compare even the best modern studio blockbusters of today to Jaws. Not only was it the “first”, it simply did populist entertainment better and more intelligently than a lot of what came after. Yet by that token, it also inspired so many to pursue better quality in these movies made for the Hollywood mainstream. Many of Jaws’s descendants proudly stand in their own right as great movies, made by people who truly understood the principles of why Jaws works so well. And of course it continues to find legions of new fans today, ubiquitous and inescapable. Like the Great White itself.
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