JAWS (1975)

bUniversal Pictures producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown purchased the film rights for JAWS in 1973, before the book by Peter Benchley was published and became a huge bestseller. They were fascinated by the thrilling plot, though in retrospect they admitted that if they had given the novel a second read, they would have certainly dismissed the idea of a movie adaption, noticing that it would be too challenging, if not impossible to shoot it.

At this point Steven Spielberg was considered a 26-year old wunderkind working at Universal Studios. After coincidentally noticing Benchley’s book in a producers’ office, Spielberg read the story and was immediately captivated. He asked Zanuck and Brown to realize the movie and finally got the job- as the third choice of the producers.

Just a couple of weeks after he decided to do the movie, Spielberg got doubts when he read the novel for the second time, realizing that he and the producers had underestimated the requirements for realizing a movie that is mostly set in the water without the technical possibilities of our recent times. Spielberg was afraid that the project could ruin his career, but he also realized that it had the potential to become a hit, after which he could have the freedom to make every movie that he wanted. But before that, Spielberg should go through a legendarily difficult production odyssey that is very well documented.

First of all, a setting had to be found. Spielberg had decided to shoot on open water, which is very difficult because everything happening on the water is principally uncontrollable due to changing weather, waves, and light. He consciously opted to fight the elements to give the movie a realistic touch and rejected building up a sea prop with painted backgrounds and round horizons as seen in movies like ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1958). Spielberg found a perfect setting in Martha’s Vineyard, a small island in New England with prominent WASP vacationers like the Kennedys, which was interestingly even more suitable to the novel version of JAWS. There had never been shot a movie in Martha’s Vineyard before, like there had never been shot a movie on open water in a small boat and with a mechanical shark before.

Three mechanical sharks were built for the production of JAWS and they were named Bruce, which was the name of Steven Spielberg’s lawyer. They were a disaster: one shark got destroyed before any scene had been shot. Spielberg invited party guests to have a look at the shark, and while the drunken guests tried to open and shut its mouth, it stopped working. The second shark was tried out the very first day of the production under the witness of director Brian de Palma, who was visiting his friend on the set. He remembers the shark as ‘squinting retarded’, with his jaw not closing properly. At the third day of the production one shark sank into the depths of the ocean, an event that changed the working title of the movie into ‘Flaws’.

Paradoxically, the technical problems with the shark proved to be a blessing for the movie. The ensemble now had to revise the thin screenplay and developed expressive scenes between the three male characters. But, what is even more important: Spielberg made a virtue out of necessity and decided not to show the shark in the movie. It is not until 62 minutes into the film that he shows a fin and 81 minutes before he shows the whole shark.

By not showing the monster, the movie is building up an immense suspense which is intensified by ingenious score by John Williams. The score represents the shark even when it cannot be seen and Spielberg had a tool to conduct the audience like a drover with a taser. Fans of the movie later morbidly relabeled the ‘electrifying’ score as ‘The Dinner Theme’. This kind of suspense based on the fear of the unknown was taken to the top by Spielberg: In post-production, he did let cut out much of the shark shots, reducing the attacks to its results: the reactions and panic of the people.

Other problems arose from the fact that Spielberg was not a very experienced director. He was careful and methodical, which meant it took a long time to get the shots that he wanted. This along with the difficulties of shooting on open water led to a huge delay in production. What was supposed to be a 55-day shoot took 159 days in the end, and the costs exploded from $3.5millions to $10millions. Some of the lead actors like Richard Dreyfuss began to speak of JAWS as a very bad movie to forestall bad reviews. They were not convinced of what they were doing and wanted to distance themselves from the potential disaster. In the end, JAWS should proof to be a blessing for everyone’s career involved in the making of the movie.

The USS Indianapolis

With Chief Brody, Matt Hooper and Quint it is a dissimilar trio going on a voyage to kill the shark: a police chief that is afraid of water, a rich college student, and an embittered Vietnam veteran. They are forced to spend time together on the boat and comradeship develops. There is a scene in which the three men sit in the boats’ cabin at night and show their scars to each other which is a great example for Spielberg’s virtuous narration technique.

Embedded in this scene, the attentive spectator can notice the story of the USS Indianapolis through a radio that is running in the background. The USS Indianapolis is the ship that transported the Hiroshima-bomb to the Pacific Ocean and got bombarded by Japanese submarines. This forced the crew to jump into the ocean where most of the marines got eaten by sharks. With this technique Spielberg’s manages to depict the brutality of the shark before it even appears on screen and also gives the story a political dimension. In this context the shark could also serve as a symptom of repressed guilt in the American psyche caused by sending out a devastating weapon.

Quint used to be part of the crew of the USS Indianapolis and is reminded of the course of events on that fatal day. He starts a monologue and seems to be absent as though in a trance during that. The monologue reveals details of the traumatic experience and also provides explanations for Quint’s decision to devote his life to hunting sharks until he even dies through a shark.

“Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, chief? You tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. /…/ The shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he’d start poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got…lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces. /…/ So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”

Quint’s monologue is building up enormous tension; even if we cannot see the actual shark until the next day’s scenes, it is present because of it. Cruel and bloody images of sharks and mangled bodies arise in the viewer’s thoughts. The atmosphere is desperate. Quint’s tale of the USS Indianapolis is not included in the novel and was first conceived by playwright Howard Sackler and later developed and rewritten by Robert Shaw. To this day it remains one of the most famous monologues in film history.

Leviathans targeting everyman- Jaws in the context of Spielberg’s other works

‘JAWS’ bears similarities to Spielberg’s 90-minute long TV movie ‘Duel’(1971). What is the shark in ‘JAWS’, is a truck with a driver that we never see in ‘Duel’. It hunts a motorist on a lonely road for most of the movie’s time until it plunges over the edge of a cliff. Suspense is created by the brilliant use of perspectives, which makes the truck seem driven by invisible forces.

In JAWS it is also not until the very end of the movie that one can fully see the shark. In both movies, the hunter has no visible motives but seems simply malicious with a will to kill. In the Making-Of documentary of JAWS Spielberg calls the movie an ‘underwater sequel of Duel’ and notes that both deal with ‘these leviathans targeting everymen’. The Polish movie poster for ‘Duel’ seems almost prophetic and can be seen as bridge between the two movies: it depicts the truck animal-like with eyes and a jaw.

In his later career Spielberg wondered why critics would not recognize Jurassic Park (1993) as an audacious mainland sequel of JAWS. Jurassic Park is an island where dinosaurs are cloned for commercial reasons. The scientists dream of a future park, which is crowded with people that travel to see these dinosaurs. The animals get out of control because things go wrong for a corrupt assistant, who wants to smuggle prehistoric embryos out of the park. All security systems get down and in a fright night the dinosaurs, especially the T-Rex, hunt and attack everybody in the park. With dinosaurs, Spielberg picked up another phenomenon almost every young boy is interested in for one of his movies.

Many of Spielberg’s movies have his idealization of the American middle class in common. In JAWS he eliminates the sexual and class antagonisms and creates closeness and love between Chief Brody and his wife, presenting one of his first idealizations of the middle-class family. Close Encounters (1977), Poltergeist (1982) and E.T. (1982) also project affectionate views of the family and the suburban middle class. Especially E.T. highlights the joys of suburban family life with an alien that befriends the family and discovers aspects of adolescent life in this surrounding.

All of these example movies examine the effects of horror or fantasy on mainstream, middle-class Americans. In JAWS it is a shark that terrorizes a small summer resort with the appealing name ‘Amityville’. With the transformation of Chief Brody from an everyman to the shark killer who restores order to the community, Spielberg presents his first middleclass hero. In E.T. it is an alien that does not fit into the typical suburban neighborhood. Although it is a loveable one and befriends a young boy who later helps him to get back home, the government is chasing him in a reckless manner. In an interview with Time Spielberg gives a reason for his artistic choices:

“Everything I do in my movies is a product of my homelife in suburban U.S.A. I can always trace a movie idea back to my childhood.”

The first Hollywood Blockbuster

Jaws is credited as the first blockbuster in movie history and the first movie that opened with a marketing plan. In 1975, test screenings for Jaws were made, which Spielberg visited fearfully and on valium. The first preview took place in Dallas and Spielberg observed the audiences’ reactions from behind the theater. When the first people ran out of the theater and threw over, he knew that he had landed a hit.

Advertising for movies were in its beginnings and television was treated as a competitor to cinema and not as a useful partner. Columbia Studios were the first to place trailers for movies on national television in 1973 and especially in 1975 it turned out to be very successful for the movies. Universal Studios followed the same strategy for JAWS, the studio invested the very high amount of 700.000$ in TV-spots that were placed during the prime time. The huge success of JAWS was at the same time a proof for the effectiveness of TV-advertising.

The movie opened on June 20^th 1975 in 409 cinemas all over the US, before that only ‘The Godfather’ and ‘The Exorcist’ opened with such a high number of copies. After it was taken out of the program, JAWS had boxed in 129 Million Dollars, what made it the most successful movie of all times. Jaws held that record for two years and then lost it to George Lucas Star Wars.

In the list of the most successful US-movies of all times JAWS still is on rank 8. It changed the film business dramatically; the studios realized how profitable mass-openings were and increased the number of simultaneous openings to over 2000 in the early 1980’s. Massive television advertising increased the costs for marketing and distribution and decreased the relevance of critics in print media. Every studio wanted to make a second Jaws and produced movies with the only aim to make big profits in short time: the blockbuster was born and Steven Spielberg was its most influential protagonist. In his enduring career he should deliver other classical blockbusters such as the Indiana Jones series and Jurassic Park. But JAWS can still be considered as one of the most qualitative blockbusters, not only in Spielberg’s career, but of all times.

by Saliha Enzenauer