Jaws (film)
"Jaws" is a 1975 thriller directed by Steven Spielberg, based on Peter Benchley’s novel about a great white shark that terrorizes a small New England coastal town named Amity. The film follows three main characters: Police Chief Martin Brody, ichthyologist Matt Hooper, and fisherman Quint, who embark on a dangerous mission to hunt down the shark responsible for several brutal attacks on swimmers. Notable for its innovative visual techniques, Spielberg utilized underwater shots and strategic lighting to create suspense, while the iconic score by John Williams heightened the tension surrounding the shark's presence, which is notably not revealed until later in the film.
The narrative explores themes of primal fear, small-town politics, and the struggle of ordinary individuals against nature’s unpredictability, making it a cultural touchstone in American cinema. The film's blend of horror, suspense, and black humor contributed to its widespread popularity and lasting impact on the thriller genre. "Jaws" is often credited with shaping the modern blockbuster and has been influential in both filmmaking and popular culture, prompting discussions about fear and human vulnerability in the face of nature's power.
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Subject Terms
Jaws (film)
Identification Motion picture
Date Released in 1975
Director Steven Spielberg
Jaws, which became the most successful motion picture of its time by earning more than $100 million, was a Hollywood disaster film that exploited the era’s hunger for sensational thrills, shocking images, and masculine American heroism in the face of unprecedented danger and terror.>
Key Figures
Steven Spielberg (1946- ), film director
Based on a pulp novel about a human-eating great white shark written by Peter Benchley, who also collaborated on the screenplay, Jaws was Steven Spielberg’s second feature film. It was his first big commercial hit, arguably because it was able to exploit widespread fears about killer sharks. Like Spielberg’s television film Duel (1971), which pitted an ordinary traveling salesperson against an anonymous driver of a menacing truck, the plot line of Jaws centered on a similar menace—a shark—that stalked unsuspecting characters. Perverse and even absurd in its plot, characters, and situations, Jaws nonetheless had a strong visceral appeal, and its visual style set a different course for disaster films.
Set in the small coastal resort community of Amity—the name means “friendship”—in New England, the film has three main protagonists, each with distinct personalities: Police Chief Martin Brody (played by Roy Scheider), ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and tough old salt Quint (Robert Shaw). The three men set out on a small boat—slyly named Orca—to track down the great white shark that has been terrorizing the community with its savage attacks on swimmers. Brody discovers that primal horror cannot be escaped even in an otherwise idyllic setting, while Hooper finds that pure science is inadequate to deal with one of nature’s unparalleled monsters. Quint, however, becomes the agent of madness or stupidity in opposition to the other characters’ reason and science. Quint clearly represents Ahab, the protagonist in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick (1851), and the 4,550-pound shark off Long Island becomes the equivalent of Melville’s whale. Quint’s obsession with the creature begins a descent into foolhardy bravado that ends with his gory death within the jaws of the shark.
Spielberg used the camera in bold ways, not limiting himself to conventional framing. He also made use of shadows against light, shooting swimmers from underwater—as if from the stalking shark’s point of view—with light filtering into the deep from above the surface. John Williams’s chilling soundtrack to signal the shark’s approach and Verna Fields’s superb editing delivered shocks, and Spielberg, in a virtuoso decision, did not show the actual shark until past the halfway mark of the film, thus building the suspense masterfully. In this way, the horror of the shark’s presence was expanded by the audience’s imagination. The sheer pace of the storytelling and the uncomplicated nature of the tale helped to make the film immensely popular.
Impact
An experiment in film terror, Jaws was considered especially American for its ability to combine Freudian horror and suspense with themes of small-town politics and an Everyman-versus-nature struggle. The film made it acceptable for the public to express its private fears openly while appreciating a suspense film’s flashes of black humor.
Bibliography
Crawley, Tony. The Steven Spielberg Story. London: Zomba Books, 1983.
Mott, Donald R., and Cheryl McAllister Saunders. Steven Spielberg. Boston: Twayne, 1986.
Taylor, Philip M. Steven Spielberg—The Man, His Movies, and Their Meaning. New York: Continuum, 1992.