Written By: Adam A. Donaldson

It was a movie based on a book by a first time novelist, and brought to life by an untested director with one film under his belt. It went over-schedule and over-budget and was forced into production without a script and a cast in order to beat the clock on a pending writers strike. Then, the principle prop of the picture, the thing upon whose functioning rested the entire plot of the film, just didn’t seem to want to work. By any stretch of the imagination, this film was destined to float out on the tide with the rest of the trash.

But then something miraculous happened: Jaws became the biggest movie to hit the industry in its entire history to that point.

June 20, 2010 was the 35th anniversary of Jaws’ release. Of course, a lot of seminal films have important anniversaries but few movies are the game changer that Jaws was. It created the summer blockbuster, put dollar signs in the eyes of studio executives and launched the career of a guy named Spielberg. In the summer of ’75, Jaws was the word, and never again did you need an excuse to stay out of the water.

Whether the stars were aligned for Jaws, or it broke through despite them, the film’s indelible mark on the culture remains despite the fact that most people today have probably experienced it on home video as opposed to the theatre screen. But does that diminish the film’s effectiveness? What’s the best way to experience Jaws: in a crowded theatre or in the intimacy of one’s home?

What isn’t in doubt though is the immediate effect the film had. Attendance at nation beaches went way down in the summer of ’75, echoing the effect that Alfred Hitchcock had on showering nearly 15 years earlier in Psycho. In fact, Jaws' author Robert Benchley later in his life began feeling that his book — and the subsequent movie — had done irreparable harm to the image of sharks. He worked till the end of his days on shark conservation.

It was a noble effort, but people reading the Benchley novel after years of familiarity with the Spielberg film may find it difficult to recognize them as similar material. When brought on to the film by producers David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck, Spielberg tossed out many of the novel’s intricate side plots, including Mayor Vaughn’s mob involvement and a brief affair between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper. Also out was the novel’s original ending where the shark simply bled to death and leaving Chief Brody as the sole survivor of the Orca expedition.

The effort of the film’s various screenwriters, including a supposed rare draft by the director himself, yielded a straightforward adventure story. But writing the script was a unique challenge only in that it went far smoother than shooting the actual film did. Going significantly over-budget and taking twice as long as scheduled to shoot, getting a Jaws film into post-production proved as elusive as the titular fish. Annals have been written about the effort with entire chapters dedicated to the stubborn main prop, a mechanical shark that spent more time on dry land than most of the cast and crew combined.

But despite the near-borderline state of failure of the production, Jaws immediately captured the imagination of audiences. Attempts at replication through sequels (Jaws 2 through Jaws: The Revenge), copycats (Arachnophobia: “Jaws with spiders”) or spin-offs (ask a gamer about Jaws Unleashed) have been mostly subpar. Jaws is unique in that it can stand alone above the noise as its own work, and what a work it is.

Despite the pox of the shark dysfunction, the effect is startling in the film’s favour. The opening scene of young Chrissie Watkins taking an evening swim only to find herself dragged under the water to her death by an unseen powerful force.

It's strange that seeing the movie again one forgets for a moment the rather ordinary beach party dissolves into a scene of terror. You sort of smirk at the 70s-ness of the scene, you laugh at the drunk guy being unable to get is clothes off, but when Chrissie starts to feel a tug from underwater, you get that feeling.

The effect doesn’t go away, and a shadow is cast over any scene where someone goes near the water. John Williams’ effective use of music and the P.O.V. camera work pioneered by Spielberg in this film has a tensing effect, especially when you’re surveying the action from the point of view of the monster. On a bright sunny day at the beach, you know someone’s going to die. Perhaps we take it for granted now, but there must have been something startling when it was first released when the shark eats both a dog (off screen) and a little boy (on screen).

The film is more than half over when we get our first “real” look at the shark. The audience is made self aware after numerous uses of the “dum-dum” music to signal the shark’s presence, the sudden appearance of the Great White as Chief Brody chums the water is a sudden shock and spawned one of the most quotable movie lines of all time: “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Of course, this was one of the rare occasions where the shark was functioning, which is why much of the rest of the film follows Brody, Hooper and Quint as they pursue three yellow barrels that are harpooned to the shark.

Onto the finale where the shark leaps out of the water and devours Quint, before Chief Brody’s heroic declaration in telling the shark to smile before blowing up the oxygen tank in its mouth. (And yes, we know Mythbusters disproved the whole oxygen tank thing, so thank you for pointing that out.)

Spielberg was right when studio execs told him that no one would buy the ending, he had the people for two hours and he would have them till the end. The shark blows up and sinks to the bottom of the ocean a bloody mess while a slight roar is heard as deliberate homage to the director’s breakthrough effort Duel, a TV movie about a man facing a different unstoppable force: a menacing semi.

The key to Jaws is simplicity. It’s a human drama about an island town being menaced by a natural threat both elusive and powerful. It’s not a shark movie, because that implies the shark is the focus. Like slasher film sequels of the 80s, the Jaws movies, as they went, became more and more concerned with high body counts and bloody and elaborate kills. And while the sight of Ellen Brody harpooning the shark with a boat in Jaws: The Revenge might have looked awesome, the moment wasn’t believable because the rest of the film, with psychic connections to sharks and a Great White out for personal revenge, skirted the original’s realism, it’s trueness of spirit.

There was an interesting article recently posted online that postulated the scenario What if Jaws was made today? This rather humorous piece on CHUD.com recited possible scenarios including the casting of Sam Worthington as Chief Brody, a CG shark, a conversion to 3-D IMAX post-production and a new title: Jaws: Rise of the Great White. It’s not hard to imagine, which is why Jaws remains an example of the system working in spite of itself. A happy accident of filmmaking the succeeded despite the odds, and remains a high-watermark for aspiring movie-makers everywhere.

It is safe to go back in the water after all.

Written by :

Adam

 

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