On June 20, 1975, cinema was about to change forever. But of course, no one knew it back then. Who would have thought, after all, that the movie by a certain Steven Spielberg, who had only directed a television film (the fantastic Duel) and something called The Sugarland Express, would achieve anything more than a box office failure? Not even he wanted to direct it, fearing being known as “the guy with the trucks and the sharks.” Instead, he wanted to make Lucky Lady, which ended up being directed by Stanley Donen. And now, 50 years later, no one celebrates the existence of Lucky Lady, but rather the immense Jaws.
Don’t let it give you a stomach cramp!
Before 1975, we had already seen movies about sharks, of course: titles like The Sharkfighters, ¡Shark! Double-edged weapon, or the documentary Blue Water White Death made it clear that cinema was ready for beaches, fangs, and blood. Now we just needed someone with the expertise to not hide the shark, to manage to build a plot behind the attacks, and to be a pioneer in the genre.
It didn’t happen immediately, of course: Peter Benchley himself, the author of the novel, tried to create a script based on it, but without success. Although he is credited, he himself has acknowledged that practically none of those scripts made it to the screen, and that Carl Gottlieb was able to give it the rhythm that Spielberg was looking for, who wanted to focus on the third act of the book (the shark chase) and lose a good handful of subplots along the way. No one cared too much when it hit theaters.
In fact, it cost only 9 million dollars and grossed 477.9 million, eternally solidifying Spielberg’s figure and turning the little shark movie that no one gave a dime for not only into a franchise but also forcing other production companies to establish marine creatures as a subgenre of horror in general. They made three more sequels (each worse than the last, by the way) and knew when to bow out. The strange thing is that no clever person in today’s Hollywood has wanted to do a reboot. And let’s cross our fingers that it stays that way.
Ducklings in the water!
Everything is immortal in Jaws: the soundtrack by John Williams, which we have all heard in our heads at some point when terror approached; the animatronic shark itself devouring its victims; Roy Schneider saying “We’re gonna need a bigger boat”; the mayor reassuring the public and which has served as a metaphor for the current world… In fact, it is one of those few immortal movies. Yes, new generations may point out that the killer’s head is static, or that the blood is too bright, but they will be hooked to the screen with the force of a Spielberg who, against all odds, knew exactly what he was doing. At the risk of his own health, of course: throughout the filming, he suspected more than once that he was going to have a heart attack.
Later, he would dazzle the world with ET, Minority Report, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Fabelmans, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, or Schindler’s List, but back then he was a newcomer who was able to dazzle the industry like few have done before or since. Five decades have passed, and if we listen to that “Taaaa-naaa” from John Williams, it still gives us a bit of a chill to dip a toe in the water. After all, you never know when you might end up being simple involuntary bait!
