The First Summer Blockbuster: JAWS

Prior to 1975, only a select few films had been granted a "wide release", the method by which nearly all blockbuster.  It also earned tremendous critical acclaim, won three Academy Awards and a nomination for Best Picture and has been cited as a major influence on the current generation of filmmakers, even inspiring the name of X-MEN (2000) director Bryan Singer's production company, Bad Hat Harry, an obscure reference to a line of dialogue.

The definitive movie poster

major motion pictures are released today, by releasing a film in hundreds, and today, thousands of cinemas simultaneously.  Previously, films were released in limited select markets, similar to how some of today's independent films are, and would gradually move their way into more markets, relying on word of mouth from the earlier markets.  In 1975, JAWS, an adaptation of a popular novel directed by an up-and-coming prodigy, was released in several hundred theaters on the same day, and the number of screens quickly increased exponentially as the film rapidly shot to become the highest-grossing film ever at that point in history and the first film to ever to gross $100 million, making it the first official
Although the film is widely considered a "horror" or "thriller", I tend to think of it foremost as an "adventure", with its central themes of variations on masculinity, extreme peril in exotic locations and man vs. nature conflict.  That said though, "suspense" is another label sometimes applied to JAWS, and that one fits pretty well, too.  The film has always been marketed primarily as a "scary thriller", and it does deliver on those promises, with intense close-calls and a healthy helping of gory deaths, but most of that is restrained to the first half, before the three major characters; Amity Island Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), salty hunter-for-hire and boat captain, Quint (Robert Shaw), and upper-class marine biologist Hooper, set sail aboard Quint's boat, the Orca, to kill the great white shark that's been feasting off a smorgasbord of Amity Island residents and tourists.
On this rusty old fishing boat, these three distinct personalities are put into direct conflict with one another.  Hooper and Quint are like mirror opposites of each other, both are of the same world but from opposite ends.  Hooper's childhood trauma involving a shark inspired a deep obsession and admiration of sharks, and he devoted his life to studying them as a  marine biologist.  Quint's experience as a survivor of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, where he witnessed dozens of fellow sailors ruthlessly devoured by sharks in WWII, has also inspired an obsession over sharks, but one of a much more Ahab-esque type.  In a mix of respect, fear and cold vengeance, Quint hunts sharks, dozens of their jaws dangling around his seaside shop.  Quint is old school, brash, and dangerously erratic; a working class-hero in overdrive.  Hooper was born with a silver spoon in his mouth; he's incredibly sure of himself, more knowledgeable than Quint, but less experienced, and both have egos enough to clash.  Even as they hate each other, Quint and Hooper seem to recognize some sort of equal, if different, footing in their world, and Chief Brody is the novice they push around.  Brody is kind of the audience portal into the story, the everyman character in the middle that we can relate to on some level.  He is responsible for hiring both Hooper and Quint, but he winds up as a subordinate to them as they clash over ideals like an angel and devil upon his shoulders, albeit with a certain ambiguity.  In the end though, Brody becomes the only one left he can rely on, and the film gives the audience their day when he blows that shark to hell in one of the most marvelously over-the-top movie deaths.

This scene never fails to make me hungry

As Marty McFly notes in BACK TO THE FUTURE PT. II (1989), "the shark still looks fake," it really does, but it's also still awesome, and it less than authentic look supports as a testament to the effectiveness of the film's other factors, because it's still an intense thrill ride.  The shark is one of the great movie monsters, and almost anyone who knows anything about JAWS knows that the stylish presentation of the shark was largely out of necessity.  When your production's mechanical shark is giving you hell, you're forced further into creativity, and you get brilliant images of floating debris that is knowingly attached to the approaching beast, and the the threat is mysterious but not so much that you don't have some idea of what makes it so threatening.  The first few kills in the film don't show the shark at all, but John Williams' iconic score makes its presence entirely clear; the first is in the iconic prologue where the skinny-dipping young lady (you gotta have a dash of sex in these things, ya know), played by Susan Backlinie, is simply thrashed around while she screams, no blood and no onscreen shark.  The next is the Kintner boy, suddenly sucked into the water with blood gushing up, and the third, Ben Gardner, doesn't even happen onscreen at all, but his gruesome remains are found in his wrecked boat.  Just after the "chum some of this shit" line, and just before the "You're going to need a bigger boat," line is what most people cite as the startling first sight of the shark as its head bursts out from the water, and as excellent as that scene is, I'm particularly fond of the fourth kill where you can see the shark through the water surface as its gaping jaws near the swimmer; the imagery is harrowing in the best way.
There's been some scholarly debate over symbolic meanings of the shark, Brody, Quint and Hooper, a lot of the theories relating to the then-recent Watergate scandal that had left many Americans disillusioned, but in my opinion, such theories are an unfortunate example of attempting to assign supposedly "suitable" meaning to a film in order to justify its worth.  I don't think art has to be intentionally symbolic in order to be symbolic, but I think this is a case of refusing to simply acknowledge the great value of escapist art.  It's very character-driven, insightful and intelligent, but it is all in the name of pleasurable and thrilling entertainment.

This kind photo is a requirement when making a killer shark film

Those kinds of films were director Steven Spielberg's bread and butter for many years before he turned to more serious "Oscar fare," beginning with SCHINDLER'S LIST in 1993, although he has since turned out the occasional decent adventure.  JAWS was Spielberg's second theatrical feature, his first one being SUGARLAND EXPRESS just a year earlier, but it bears a strong resemblance to DUEL, a made-for-television movie that Spielberg directed and aired in 1971.  DUEL was also about the everyman, a man en route to a conference, against a deadly, larger-than-life force, a rusty old semi truck driven by an unseen, psychopathic driver, and finally, the everyman explodes his attacker.  JAWS made Spielberg's career, even after the production shot astronomically over budget and the shooting well beyond schedule, but it remains one of the finest testaments to his talent.

Fair warning though, JAWS is one of those funny little movies that parents recall from their youth as happy memories and then unsuspectingly show to their then-traumatized children, and as hilarious as that kind of thing is, JAWS is a surprisingly brutal movie with moments of graphic gore and nudity.  If it were released brand-new today, the content might very likely earn an R rating, but its cultural familiarity and genre aspects work as mitigating factors.  Even adult viewers may get a bit queasy, but that's just part of the experience for them.

JAWS (June 20, 1975)
4 out of 4 stars
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
Rated PG for unspecified reasons (but more suited for a very hard PG-13 today, due to some intense bloody shark attacks, gore, nudity, brief drug content and language.)