Few directors have a filmography with as many highlights as Steven Spielberg, and few of his films transfer so cleanly from one decade to the next as his 1975 film Jaws. Spielberg’s first major feature at the helm, which is turning the corner on 40 years since scaring up almost a half-billion dollars at the box office, has had as deep an impression on each new wave of movie lovers as the first generation that sat in the theaters in June 1975. Jaws was placed in the United States Film Registry in 2001 under their normal criteria of the film being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” This is, like for most of the films in the Registry, a triumvirate of understatement. Many who were alive to recall the film’s impact remember the shark thriller as the start of the summer-blockbuster trend that dictates much of the film industry today. Most of us who have joined the party since then simply categorize Jaws as one of the most impactful cinematic experiences of our childhood. Why does Spielberg’s thriller stand up so well today compared with even the most modern action thrillers?
Anyone with an eye on the summer-blockbuster season has recently seen that the critical and popular reception given to the mix of practical and computer-generated effects in films have come in waves over the past 30 years. Several decades ago, the most influential, albeit simple, metric to judging the use of computer or practical effects was simply how real it looked. While that sentiment is certainly still a preeminent evaluative measure of today’s films, most big-budget filmmakers have the ability to use as much or as little CGI in their films as they desire. Because of this, realism as an evaluation of a film’s quality has been joined by authenticity: Having Andy Serkis buried beneath CGI and a motion-capture suit captivates audiences more than an entirely rendered Caesar the ape. Public sentiment toward or against the quality of CGI mostly follows the excellence of the finished product (the lows of 1999’s Deep Blue Sea to the highs of 2009’s Avatar), but a recent surge of support for George Miller’s use of practical effects in the Namibian desert in Mad Max: Fury Road has perhaps begun to put a premium back on mostly computer-unassisted filmmaking. While Spielberg’s 1993 dino-thriller Jurassic Park stands as perhaps the best example of CGI aging well, Jaws has stood firm at the top of the shark attack sub-genre thanks to its unwavering faith in a robot fish.
Reading about the technical production of Jaws can sound silly in today’s computer-driven filmmaking climate: Mechanical sharks? Miniature cages to make the “shark” look bigger? Even after seeing the finished product, these sound like the techniques utilized in a university student film, not by a director on his way to crafting some of the most celebrated action thrillers of a generation. Spielberg didn’t have the ability or budget to alter the image of the shark using a computer, but it hardly mattered. “Bruce” spends so little time on screen that the money shot—in which the shark jumps onto the back of a boat and devours a major character—is the only obvious hat tip towards the animatronics at work. This was not only the result of an incredible special-effects team, led by Robert A. Mattey, but Spielberg’s important creative choice to withhold the actual shark for much of the film, even during the attacks (see the opening scene). This tactic, while not originating with Jaws, has foretold countless monster flicks in the decades since, from the director’s own Jurassic Park to other summer blockbusters like Super 8 (2011) and last year’s Godzilla. But while audiences last summer complained about Godzilla’s lack of screen time as merely a trope or a cop-out, the choice made in Jaws to keep the shark off-camera was a mix of budget necessity and narrative coherence: The film is as much about the characters above water as below.
If there’s an identity crisis on the part of summer popcorn flicks, it’s in how seriously they decide to take themselves. Although there’s no surefire recipe for creating a tonal balance, those building the cinematic world need simply to embrace their choice and have it reflect the storyline as a whole. Nowhere has this been more visible than in the world of superheroes. On the brooding end, there’s scratchy-throated Bruce Wayne (Nolan’s trilogy: good) and a bleakly lit Clark Kent (Man of Steel: not so much). On the other side, the more jovial approach to Iron Man in 2008 saw Robert Downey Jr.’s confident and garrulous superhero win hearts as well as the unexpected role as the unspoken ringleader through the first two Avengers features. Embracing a particular level of levity or glumness has been key to the financial, or at least critical, success of several summer blockbusters over the last few years (the self-deprecating role of Tom Cruise in last year’s Edge of Tomorrow, or the dark morbidity of David Yates’ sixth installment in the Harry Potter franchise, Half-Blood Prince, matching the dour bleakness of the source material). However, few have traversed the gap from scary thriller to ludicrous dialogue quite so easily as Jaws.
Jaws straddles this line with the precision of a tightrope walker. Several times, the film digs into almost farcical territory, most blatantly in the caricature of the Amity Island mayor. Always in a flashy suit and only ever concerned about the tourism industry, Mayor Larry Vaughn (played to oily perfection by Murray Hamilton) worriedly coerces citizens into the water over the July 4th weekend just days after the first shark attack and uses his small-time political minions to pressure police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) into leaving the beach open. Neither of these moments stand out as weaknesses of the film; rather, they support the narrative of the small town trying to keep their premium income stream–tourism–afloat. The film’s more serious moments, such as Brody getting berated by the mother of a killed swimmer, add to the story in much the same way. Brody himself walks between community safety and economic vitality, a position he likely never predicted in his move from New York City. Overall, neither of these two approaches to tone dominate the film, with the bleakness of the story reinforcing each jump scare, while the comical absurdity at times adds plenty of memorable quips.
Perhaps the easiest way for a movie to date itself is in technology, where the arrival of a flip-phone or a typewriter can immediately incite giggles from younger audience members. But in fact, even films falling within a particular era (say, since the advent of mobile phones) often fall into the trap of having narratives depend on a working/broken cellphone. “Enhance that image,” “hack that computer,” and “call the authorities” can be easy outs in scripts needing far more help than technology can provide.
And yet Jaws largely occurs in a technological void. “Why don’t they just call the police?” isn’t a reasonable question, partially because the shark is beyond law enforcement’s capabilities, but also because Brody is the police. When Quint (Robert Shaw) decides to smash the radio (the last connection from his boat, the Orca, to Amity Island), impressing the viewer with a sense of isolation and finality, we get the message loud and clear: Technology will not give the three shark hunters another chance, and this trip will ensure the outcome one way or another. Importantly, Matt Hooper’s (Richard Dreyfuss) technology is also rendered useless. This is not just a way of illustrating how massive Spielberg’s shark really is (pulling three barrels underwater!), but it also necessitates Quint’s involvement in the shark-extermination effort, bringing along his boats and his hunting methods. Though this leads to Quint’s demise (and very nearly Hooper’s as well), it culminates in one of the more satisfyingly simple endings in cinematic history: a man, a gun, a shark, and a scuba tank—technology that’s been around for over a century.
All of these reasons help explain why Jaws, even 40 years on, feels so timeless and relevant when viewed today. Jaws can (and in some ways has) been remade using the most-updated CGI, but one would strain to argue that the original leaves much to be improved. Jaws starts and ends with the human characters in addition to the craft with which Spielberg puts the film together.
