| Jaws | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
|
| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Produced by | David Brown Richard D. Zanuck |
| Screenplay by | Peter Benchley Carl Gottlieb |
| Based on | Jaws by Peter Benchley |
| Starring | Roy Scheider Robert Shaw Richard Dreyfuss Lorraine Gary Murray Hamilton |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Cinematography | Bill Butler |
| Editing by | Verna Fields |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 20, 1975 |
| Running time | 124 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $9 million |
| Box office | $470,654,000 |
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach, only to be overruled by the town council, which wants the beach to remain open to draw a profit from tourists during the summer season. After several attacks, the police chief enlists the help of a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter. Roy Scheider stars as police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as oceanographer Matt Hooper, Robert Shaw as shark hunter Quint, Murray Hamilton as the Mayor of Amity Island, and Lorraine Gary as Brody's wife, Ellen.
The film was shot on location at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, and had a troubled production, going over budget and schedule. As the mechanical sharks suffered many malfunctions, Spielberg decided to mostly suggest the animal's presence, by utilizing representative props and an ominous yet subdued theme created by composer John Williams to indicate the shark's impending appearances. Jaws is regarded as a watershed film in motion picture history, the father of the summer blockbuster film and one of the first "high concept" films. Because of the film's success in advance screenings, studio executives decided to distribute it in a much wider release pattern than ever before employed.
Upon release, Jaws became the highest-grossing film of all time, and received much critical acclaim. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, and considered along with 1977's Star Wars as the film that cemented the notion that movie studios should distribute their big-release action and adventure pictures—commonly referred as tentpole pictures—during the summer months. The film was followed by three sequels, none with the participation of Spielberg or Benchley.
Contents |
During an evening beach party on the fictional Amity Island in New England, Chrissie Watkins, a 23-year-old woman, leaves a beach party to go skinny dipping, only to be dragged back and forth violently and then under the water. Amity's police chief, Martin Brody, is notified that Christine is missing, and deputy Len Hendricks finds her remains on the beach. The medical examiner informs Brody that the death was due to a shark attack. Brody plans to close the beaches but is overruled by mayor Larry Vaughan, who fears that reports of a shark attack will ruin the summer tourist season, which is the town's primary source of income. The medical examiner consequently attributes the death to a boating accident. Brody reluctantly goes along with the explanation.
A short time later, a boy is killed by a shark at the beach. The boy's mother places a bounty on the shark, sparking an amateur shark-hunting frenzy and attracting the attention of local professional shark hunter Quint. Brought in by Brody, marine biologist Matt Hooper examines Christine's remains and concludes she was killed by a shark, not a boat.
A large tiger shark is caught by fishermen, leading the town to believe the problem is solved, but Hooper is unconvinced that the shark is the killer and asks to examine its stomach contents. Vaughan refuses to make the "half-assed autopsy" public, so Brody and Hooper return after dark and discover the dead shark does not contain human remains. Scouting aboard Hooper's boat, they come across the half-sunken wreckage of a boat belonging to local fisherman Ben Gardner. Hooper explores the vessel underwater and discovers a sizable shark's tooth protruding from the damaged side of the hull. While prying it loose, Hooper is startled by the remains of Gardner, which causes him to drop and lose the tooth. Vaughan refuses to close the beaches, and on the Fourth of July numerous tourists arrive. A prank by two boys causes misguided panic and the real shark enters a nearby estuary, killing a man and causing Brody's son to go into shock after witnessing the attack. Brody convinces Vaughan to hire Quint. Quint reluctantly allows Hooper to join the hunt along with Brody. The three set out to catch and kill the shark aboard Quint's vessel, the Orca.
Brody is given the task of laying a chum line while Quint uses fishing tackle to try to hook the shark. As Brody continues chumming, an enormous great white shark looms up behind the boat; the trio watch the great white circle the Orca while Hooper takes pictures of the shark for research purposes. They estimate it weighs 3 short tons (2.7 t) and is 25 feet (7.6 m) long. Quint harpoons the shark with a line attached to a flotation barrel, designed to prevent the shark from submerging and to track it on the surface, but the shark pulls the barrel under and disappears.
Night falls without another sighting, so the men retire to the boat's cabin, where Quint tells of his experience with sharks as a survivor of the sinking of the warship USS Indianapolis during the War in the Pacific in 1945. The shark reappears, damaging the boat's hull before slipping away. In the morning, the men make repairs to the engine. Attempting to call the Coast Guard for help, Brody is stopped by Quint, who destroys the radio with a baseball bat. After a long chase Quint harpoons another barrel to the shark. The men tie the barrels to the stern, but the shark, after Quint harpoons it again adding a third barrel, drags the boat backwards, forcing water onto the deck and into the engine, flooding it. Quint is about to cut the ropes when the cleats are pulled off the stern. The shark continues attacking the boat and Quint heads toward shore with the shark in pursuit, hoping to draw the animal into shallow waters, where it will get beached and, once unable to swim, suffocate. In his obsession to kill the shark, Quint overtaxes Orca's engines, causing them to stall.
With the boat immobilized, the trio try a desperate approach: Hooper dons his SCUBA gear and enters the ocean inside a shark proof cage in order to stab the shark in the mouth with a hypodermic spear filled with strychnine. When the shark attacks and begins destroying the cage, Hooper drops his spear. The shark gets tangled in the cage's remains, allowing Hooper to escape to the seabed. As Quint and Brody raise the remnants of the cage, the shark throws itself onto the boat, crushing the transom. As the boat sinks, Quint slides down the slippery deck into the shark's mouth and is eaten alive. Brody retreats to the boat's partly submerged cabin. When the shark attacks him there, he shoves a pressurized scuba tank into the shark's mouth, then takes Quint's rifle and climbs the Orca's mast. Brody shoots at the tank wedged in the shark's mouth, causing it to explode and blow the shark to pieces. Hooper emerges, and the two make rafts out of the Orca's remains to paddle back to Amity Island.
Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, producers at Universal Pictures, heard about Peter Benchley's novel at the same time at different locations. Brown came across it in the fiction department of Cosmopolitan, a lifestyle magazine then edited by his wife, Helen Gurley Brown. A small card gave a detailed description of the plot, concluding with the comment "might make a good movie".[1] The producers each read it overnight and agreed the next morning that it was "the most exciting thing that they had ever read" and that, although they were unsure how they would accomplish it, they wanted to produce the film.[2] Brown claimed that had they read the book twice, they would never have made the film because of the difficulties in executing some of the sequences.[3] They purchased the film rights to Benchley's novel in 1973 for approximately $175,000.[4]
Zanuck and Brown had originally planned to hire John Sturges to direct the film, before considering Dick Richards.[5] However, they grew irritated by Richards's habit of calling the shark "the whale", subsequently dropping him from the project.[5] Zanuck and Brown signed Spielberg to direct in June 1973, before the release of his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express (also a Zanuck/Brown production).[5] Spielberg had expressed interest in Jaws as he felt the book was similar to his television film Duel in that both deal with "these leviathans targeting everymen."[6]
Before production begun, Spielberg was reluctant to continue with Jaws, as he was afraid of becoming typecast as the "truck and shark director" and wanted to explore his artistic vein,[7] even considered moving onto the production of 20th Century Fox's Lucky Lady instead. Universal vetoed Spielberg's departure,[8] and Brown convinced the director to stay by saying that "after [Jaws], you can make all the films you want".[7]
When they purchased the rights to his novel, the producers guaranteed that Benchley would write the first draft of the screenplay. Overall, he wrote three drafts before deciding to bow out of the project,[4] although he later returned to play a small onscreen role as a reporter.[6] For the adaptation, Spielberg wanted to stick with the novel's basic concept, while removing Benchley's many subplots.[4] Zanuck, Brown and Spielberg removed the novel's adulterous affair between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper fearing it might compromise the camaraderie between the men on the Orca.[9] Spielberg also changed the shark's demise from dying from extensive wounds to a scuba tank-related explosion, as he felt a film needed more of a "big rousing ending" which audiences would like.[6]
Spielberg invited John Byrum for a rewrite, but he refused.[7] Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Howard Sackler happened to be in Los Angeles when the filmmakers began looking for another writer and offered to do an uncredited rewrite; since the producers and Spielberg were unhappy with Benchley's drafts, they quickly accepted his offer.[6] Carl Gottlieb, who had just been cast as Meadows, the politically connected editor of the local paper, was hired to what would be "a one-week dialogue polish", but eventually escalated to him becoming the primary screenwriter, rewriting the entire script for a nine-week period during principal photography.[10] The script pages were mostly finished the night before the scenes were shot, as Gottlieb had dinners with Spielberg and members of the cast and crew to decide what should enter the film. Many pieces of dialogue originated from the actors improvising during dinner, and a few were created on set, the most notable case being Roy Scheider ad-libbing the line "You're gonna need a bigger boat".[11] John Milius contributed dialogue polishes. Spielberg has claimed that he prepared his own draft, although it is unclear if the other screenwriters drew on his material.[12]
According to Gottlieb, Quint was "in the abstract" based on sport fisherman Frank Mundus, whose book Sportfishing for Sharks was read for research.[13] The authorship of Quint's monologue about the fate of the cruiser USS Indianapolis has caused substantial controversy as to who deserves the most credit for the speech. Spielberg described it as a collaboration among John Milius, Howard Sackler, and actor Robert Shaw -[12] Sackler came with the concept of the Indianapolis being Quint's motivation for who he was, Milius turned Sackler's "three-quarters of a page" speech into a monologue, which was then rewritten by Shaw.[14] Gottlieb gives primary credit to Shaw, downplaying Milius's contribution.[15] Sugarland Express writers Matthew Robbins and Hal Barwood also did uncredited contributions.[16]
Despite compliance to Zanuck and Brown's request for known actors,[6] Spielberg tried not to get big stars, as he felt relatively unknown people made the audience "believe that all was happening to people like you and me", and that stars "bring a lot of memories along with them, and those memories can, sometimes, corrupt the story."[16] The first person cast for the film was Lorraine Gary, the wife of then-studio chief, Sid Sheinberg.[6]
The role of Brody was offered to Robert Duvall, but the actor was only interested in portraying Quint.[17] According to Spielberg, Charlton Heston expressed a desire for the role, but Spielberg felt that Heston was too large a personality, as Spielberg intended the film's primary "star" to be the shark.[18] Roy Scheider became interested in the project after overhearing a screenwriter and Spielberg at a party talking about having the shark jump up onto a boat.[6] Spielberg was initially apprehensive about hiring Scheider, fearing he would portray a "tough guy", similar to his role in The French Connection.[17]
Nine days prior to the start of production, neither Quint nor Hooper had been cast.[19] The role of Quint was originally offered to actors Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden, both of whom passed.[6][17] Producers Zanuck and Brown had just finished working with Robert Shaw on The Sting, and suggested him to Spielberg as a possible Quint.[20] Shaw was reluctant about taking the role since he did not like the book, but decided to accept following the suggestion of both his wife Mary Ure and his secretary—"The last time they were that enthusiastic was From Russia With Love. And they were right."[21]
For the role of Hooper, Spielberg initially wanted Jon Voight.[20] Timothy Bottoms, Joel Grey and Jeff Bridges were also considered for the part.[22] George Lucas suggested Richard Dreyfuss, who he had directed in American Graffiti.[6] The actor initially passed on the role, but after being disappointed by his own performance in a pre-release screening of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, a film he had just completed, he immediately called Spielberg and accepted the role, fearing that no one would want to hire him once Kravitz was released. Because the film was so dissimilar to the novel, Spielberg asked Dreyfuss not to read the book before offering him the role.[23] The casting of Dreyfuss lead the character to be rewritten to fit the actor more,[19] as well as to be more representative of Spielberg, since the director came to view Dreyfuss as "my alter ego".[22]
"We started the film without a script, without a cast and without a shark."
Principal photography began on May 2, 1974.[25] Location shooting occurred on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, chosen because the ocean had a sandy bottom 12 miles (19 km) out to sea and never dropped below thirty-five feet (11 m). This helped the prop sharks to operate smoothly and still provide a realistic location. As Spielberg wanted to film at relatively close distances to resemble what people see while swimming, cinematographer Bill Butler developed new equipment for better marine and underwater shoots, such as a rig to keep the camera stable regardless of tide and a sealed box to put the camera underwater.[6] Other locations considered for the "vacation area that was middle-class enough so that the appearance of a shark would destroy the tourist business" included Southampton and Long Island.[26]
Three full-size pneumatically-powered prop sharks —which the film crew collectively nicknamed "Bruce" after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Raimer—[27] were made for the production: a "sea-sled shark", a full-body prop with its belly missing that was towed with a 300′ (roughly 100 m) line, and two "platform sharks", one that moved from camera-left to -right (with its hidden side exposing a wide array of pneumatic hoses), and an opposite model with its right flank uncovered.[4] The sharks were designed by art director Joe Alves during the fall of 1973. Between November 1973 and April 1974, the sharks were fabricated at Rolly Harper's Motion Picture & Equipment Rental in Sun Valley, CA. Their construction was supervised by legendary mechanical effects supervisor Bob Mattey and up to 40 effects technicians including Conrad 'Whitey' Krumm, Roy Arbogast, Richie Helmer, and the Wood brothers, Michael and Gary. After the sharks were completed, they were trucked to the shooting location. In early July, the platform used to tow the two "side model" sharks capsized as it was being lowered to the ocean floor, forcing a team of divers to retrieve it.[6] The model required 14 operators to control all of the moving parts.[23] A fourth, hard-fiberglass shark was built in 1976 and placed at Universal Studios in Studio City, CA, until 1990. It has been on display at the Aadlen Bros. U-Pick Parts yard in Sun Valley, CA, since 1992 where it is affectionately referred to as "Junkyard Bruce".[28][29][30]
The film had a troubled shoot and went considerably over budget. David Brown said that the budget "was $4 million and the picture wound up costing $9 million",[31] and disgruntled crew members gave the film the nickname "Flaws".[23][27] Spielberg attributed many problems to his perfectionism, wanting to shoot at sea with a life-sized shark -"I could have shot the movie in the tank or even in a protected lake somewhere, but it would not have looked the same." -[6][28][21] and his inexperience - "I was naive about the ocean, basically. I was pretty naive about mother nature and the hubris of a filmmaker who thinks he can conquer the elements was foolhardy, but I was too young to know I was being foolhardy when I demanded that we shoot the film in the Atlantic Ocean and not in a North Hollywood tank."[14] Shooting at sea led to many delays: unwanted sailboats drifted into frame, cameras got soaked, and the Orca once began to sink with the actors on board. The prop sharks frequently malfunctioned owing to a series of issues including bad weather, pneumatic hoses taking on salt water, broken shark frames due to water resistance, corroding skin, electrolysis and "non-absorbent" neoprene foam that made up the skin absorbing water causing the shark to balloon, which it did on its original water test. More than a few times the sea-sled model would get caught in the seaweed forests prompting effects divers to search for the lost shark, scaring a few in the process.[6] Gottlieb was nearly decapited by the boat's propellers, and Dreyfuss was almost imprisoned in the steel cage.[21] Editor Verna Fields rarely had material to work during principal photography, as according to Spielberg "we would shoot five scenes in a good day, three in an average day, and none in a bad day."[6]
To some degree, the delays in the production proved serendipitous. The script was refined during production, and the unreliable mechanical sharks forced Spielberg to shoot most of the scenes with the shark only hinted at. For example, for much of the shark hunt, its location is represented by the floating yellow barrels. Spielberg also included multiple shots of just the dorsal fin. This forced restraint is widely thought to have increased the suspense of these scenes, giving them a Hitchcockian tone -[23][32] Spielberg declared that "The shark not working was a godsend. It made me become more like Alfred Hitchcock than like Ray Harryhausen." The director also added that while the acting was important for making audiences believe in such a big shark, "the more fake the shark looked in the water (...) the more my anxiety told me to heighten the naturalism of the performances."[14] A few scenes were planned with a visible shark from the start, such as the death of Chrissie, for which stuntwoman-turned-actress Susan Backlinie was dragged and pulled by cables to simulate an attack.[6]
Footage of real sharks was shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor in the waters off Australia, with a smaller-framed actor in a miniature shark cage to create the illusion that the shark was enormous.[6][33] Originally, the script, following the novel, had the shark killing Hooper in the shark cage, but during filming one of the sharks became trapped in the girdle of the cage and proceeded to tear the cage apart.[6] The crew found the footage of this incident to be so visually stunning, they were eager to incorporate it into the final film.[18] However, no one had been in the cage at the time, so the script was changed to have Matt Hooper escape, thus providing an explanation for the empty cage.[6][18]
Although filming was scheduled to take 55 days, it eventually ended on October 6, 1974 after 159 days.[23][25] Spielberg, reflecting on the extended delay, stated: "I thought my career as a filmmaker was over. I heard rumors … that I would never work again because no one had ever taken a film 100 days over schedule."[23] Spielberg himself was not present for the shooting of the final scene in which the shark explodes, as he believed that the crew were planning to throw him in the water when this scene was complete. It has since become a tradition for Spielberg to be absent when the final scene of a film he directs is being filmed.[34] Afterwards, underwater scenes were shot at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer water tank in Culver City, with stuntmen Dick Warlock and Frank James Sparks as stand-ins for Dreyfuss in the scene where the shark attacks the cage. The scene in which Hooper discovers fisherman Ben Gardner's body in the hull of his wrecked boat was added after an initial screening of the film. After reactions to that screening, Spielberg said he was greedy for "one more scream" and, with $3,000 of his own money, financed the scene after he was denied funding from Universal Pictures. Actor Craig Kingsbury had to press his head into a latex mold to make an exact copy, which was then attached to a fake body and placed in the wrecked boat's hull. The underwater scene was shot in film editor Verna Fields's swimming pool in Encino, CA.[6]
John Williams composed the film's score, which earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score and was ranked sixth on the American Film Institute's 100 Years of Film Scores.[35][36] The main "shark" theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes, E and F,[37] became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger (see leading-tone). Williams described the theme as having the "effect of grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable."[38] The soundtrack piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate French horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound "a little more threatening".[39] When Williams first demonstrated his idea to Spielberg, playing just the two notes on a piano, Spielberg was said to have laughed, thinking that it was a joke. Spielberg later said that without Williams's score the film would have been only half as successful, and Williams acknowledges that the score jumpstarted his career.[6] He had previously scored Spielberg's feature film debut The Sugarland Express and went on to collaborate with him on almost all of his films.[38]
As Williams saw similarities between Jaws and pirate movies, he tried to add much "pirate music, which is primal, but fun and entertaining".[6] The score contains echoes of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, particularly the opening of "The Adoration of the Earth" and "Auguries of Spring".[40] The music has drawn comparisons to Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and the ominous music for the off-screen hunter in Bambi, in which the music enhances the presence of an unseen terror, in this case the shark.[41]
There are various interpretations of the meaning and effectiveness of the theme. Some have thought the two-note expression is intended to mimic the shark's heartbeat, beginning slow and controlled as the killer hunts and rising to a frenzied, shrieking climax as it approaches its prey.[42] Others have stated that the music at first sounds like the creaking and groaning of a boat, and therefore is inaudible when it begins so that it never seems to start, but simply rises out of the sounds of the film. One critic believes the true strength of the score is its ability to create a "harsh silence", abruptly cutting away from the music right before it climaxes.[41] Furthermore, the audience is conditioned to associate the shark with its theme, since the score is never used as a red herring.[38] It only plays when the real shark appears. This is later exploited when the shark suddenly appears with no musical introduction. Regardless of the meaning behind it, the theme is widely acknowledged as one of the most recognized scores of all time.[43]
The original soundtrack for Jaws was released by MCA Records in 1975, and as a CD in 1992, including roughly a half hour of music that John Williams redid for the album.[44] In 2000, two versions of the score were released: Decca/Universal reissued the soundtrack album to coincide with the release of the 25th anniversary DVD, featuring the entire 51 minutes of the original score;[44] and Varèse Sarabande put a re-recording of the entire Jaws score performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conducted by Joel McNeely.[45]
Jaws bears similarities to several literary and artistic works, most notably Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. The character of Quint strongly resembles Captain Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequod who devotes his life to hunting a sperm whale. Quint's monologue reveals a similar obsession with sharks; even his boat, the Orca, is named after the only natural enemy of the white shark. In the novel and original screenplay, Quint dies after being dragged under the ocean by a harpoon tied to his leg, similar to Ahab's death in Melville's novel.[46] A direct reference to these similarities may be found in the original screenplay, which introduced Quint by showing him watching the film version of Moby-Dick, with his laughter throughout making people get up and leave the theater (Wesley Strick's screenplay for Cape Fear features a similar scene). However, the scene from Moby-Dick could not be licensed from Gregory Peck, the copyright holder.[6] Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb also drew comparisons to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, saying that "Jaws is more of a titanic struggle, like Melville or Hemingway."[13]
The underwater scenes seen from the shark's point of view have been compared with two 1950s horror films, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Monster That Challenged the World.[47][48] Gottlieb listed two 1950s science fiction productions as influence for the unseen monster: The Thing from Another World, which Gottlieb described as "a great horror film where you only see the monster in the last reel";[49] and It Came From Outer Space, where "the suspense was built up because the creature was always off-camera" and lead Spielberg and Gottlieb to "concentrate on showing the 'effects' of the shark rather than the shark itself".[11]
Critics such as Neil Sinyard have noticed similarities to Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People.[50] Gottlieb himself said he and Spielberg referred to Jaws as "Moby-Dick meets Enemy of the People."[51] The Ibsen work features a doctor who discovers that a seaside town's medicinal hot springs, a major tourist attraction and form of revenue, are contaminated. When the doctor attempts to convince the townspeople of the danger, he loses his job and is shunned. This plotline is paralleled in Jaws by Brody's conflict with Mayor Vaughn, who refuses to acknowledge the presence of a shark that may dissuade summer beachgoers from coming to Amity. In the film, Brody is vindicated when more shark attacks occur at the crowded beach in broad daylight. Sinyard calls the film a "deft combination of Watergate and Ibsen's play".[50]
It is also noted in the film a dissatisfaction with politics reflecting the post-Watergate scandal period, with the only villain besides the shark being the mayor who tries to hide the shark attacks, and the day being saved by the everyman, Brody — while the right-wing macho Quint gets killed, and the leftist Hooper is sent out of battle. Going against the counterculture so widespread among New Hollywood filmmakers, the conflict was not against authorities, but a menace which targets everyone regardless of socioeconomic position.[52]
Rather than let the film gain notice by word-of-mouth, Universal spent $700,000 promoting Jaws, which included a successful television marketing campaign for the film.[24] Universal "devised and co-ordinated a highly innovative plan" for the first film's distribution and exhibition.[53] The studio and publisher Bantam designed a logo which would appear on both the paperback and on all film advertising. "Both publisher and distributor recognized the mutual benefits that a joint promotion strategy would bring."[53] Producers Zanuck and Brown toured six cities to promote the paperback and the film.[53] The centerpiece of the promotion was the poster image featuring the shark approaching a lone female swimmer. It was based on the paperback's cover, and had the same artist, Bantam employee Roger Kastel,[54] while employing a design made by Tony Seiniger of Seiniger Advertising. The agency spent six months working at the poster, with Seiniger declaring that "no matter what we did, it didn't look scary enough," until Seiniger decided that "you had to actually go underneath the shark so you could see his teeth."[55]
Once the film was released, more merchandising was created, including shark-illustrated swimming towels and T-shirts, plastic shark fins for swimmers to wear, and shark-shaped inflatables for them to float on. The Ideal Toy Company produced a game in which the player had to use a hook to fish out items from the shark's mouth before the jaws closed.[56]
By the time Jaws was released, films typically opened slowly, usually in a few theaters in major cities]], which allowed for a series of "premieres." As the success of a film increased, and word of mouth grew, distributors would forward the prints to additional cities across the country. Some films eventually achieved a wide release, such as The Godfather, but even that blockbuster had originally debuted in just five theaters.[57] Wide releases were often used either for holiday releases to capitalize on family availability, or films of doubtful quality to diminish the effect of negative reviews and word of mouth (exceptions included The Trial of Billy Jack, Magnum Force and the James Bond series).[58][59] Jaws was the first film to successfully open nationwide on hundreds of screens simultaneously, coupled with a national marketing campaign—a then-unheard of practice. (A month earlier, Columbia had done the same with a Charles Bronson thriller, Breakout, but the box office was middling at best.)[60] The film became the first to use extensive television advertising.[60][61] The media blitz "included approximately twenty-five thirty-second advertisements per night on prime-time network TV" between 18–20 June 1975.[53] Universal executive Sidney Sheinberg's rationale was that nationwide marketing costs would be amortized at a more favorable rate per print than if a slow, scaled release were carried out. Sheinberg's gamble paid off, with Jaws becoming a box office smash hit and the father of the summer blockbuster.[62][63]
After the release of Jaws, journalists and critics detailed its impact on how films were released in theaters. Peter Biskind wrote, "[The film] diminish[ed] the importance of print reviews, making it virtually impossible for a film to build slowly, finding its audience by dint of mere quality. … In a sense, Spielberg was the Trojan horse through which the studios began to reassert their power."[64] Author Thomas Schatz also wrote on the film's impact: "If any single film marked the arrival of the New Hollywood, it was Jaws, the Spielberg-directed thriller that recalibrated the profit potential of the Hollywood hit, and redefined its status as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon as well. The film brought an emphatic end to Hollywood's five-year recession, while ushering in an era of high-cost, high-tech, high-speed thrillers."[64] Following the success of Jaws, major studio films have almost universally been distributed and marketed on a national scale. In addition, when summer was usually a season to dump films likely to be poor performers, the success of Jaws caused studios to shift their action and thriller films out of winter releases.[64]
When Jaws was released on June 20, 1975, it opened at 464 theaters.[65] The release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theaters, the largest simultaneous distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. During the first weekend of wide release, Jaws grossed more than $7 million, and was the top grosser for the following five weeks.[66] In just 78 days it overcame The Godfather as the highest-grossing film to date.[57] Jaws finished its run in theaters with $129 million,[49]and became the first film to reach more than $100 million in U.S. box office receipts.[61][67]
Jaws was the highest grossing box office film until Star Wars debuted two years later.[68] It is currently the 94th highest grossing film of all time with $470 million worldwide,[69] and the 57th highest domestically with a total North American gross of $260 million.[66] Jaws sold an estimated total of 128,078,800 tickets in North America, which ranks as the seventh most watched film of all time.[70]
The film received universal acclaim. It currently holds a 100% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, with the critical consensus stating "Compelling, well-crafted storytelling and a judicious sense of terror ensure Steven Spielberg's Jaws has remained a benchmark in the art of delivering modern blockbuster thrills."[71] In his original review, Roger Ebert called it "a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings".[72] Variety's A.D. Murphy praised Spielberg's directorial skills, and called Robert Shaw's performance "absolutely magnificent".[73] Pauline Kael called it "the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made… [with] more zest than an early Woody Allen picture, a lot more electricity, [and] it's funny in a Woody Allen sort of way".[74] Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote "Spielberg is blessed with a talent that is absurdly absent from most American filmmakers these days: this man actually knows how to tell a story on screen. … It speaks well of this director's gifts that some of the most frightening sequences in Jaws are those where we don't even see the shark."[75]
The film was not without its detractors. Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, said "It's a measure of how the film operates that not once do we feel particular sympathy for any of the shark's victims…In the best films, characters are revealed in terms of the action. In movies like Jaws, characters are simply functions of the action. They're at its service. Characters are like stage hands who move props around and deliver information when it's necessary", but also noted that "It's the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun".[76] Los Angeles Times critic Charles Champlin disagreed with the film's PG rating, saying that "Jaws is too gruesome for children, and likely to turn the stomach of the impressionable at any age." He goes on to say: "It is a coarse-grained and exploitative work which depends on excess for its impact. Ashore it is a bore, awkwardly staged and lumpily written."[77] The most widespread criticism of the film is the artificiality of the mechanical shark.[43]
Jaws won three Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt , Roger Heman , Earl Madery and John Carter).[35][78] It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.[79] Spielberg felt much resented about not being nominated for Best Director.[75]
In 2008, Jaws was selected by Empire magazine as the fifth greatest film ever made.[80] The magazine also placed Quint at #50 on their list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.[81] In 2003, The New York Times included the film on its list of the best 1000 movies ever made.[82] In 2010, Total Film selected the film as one of The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time.[83] Jaws was number 48 on American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies, a list of the greatest American films of all time, dropping down to number 56 on the 10 Year Anniversary list.[84][85] AFI also ranked the shark at number 18 on its list of the 50 Best Villains,[86] Roy Scheider's line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" 35th on a list of top 100 movie quotes,[87] John Williams's score at sixth on a list of 100 Years of Film Scores,[36] and the film as second on a list of 100 most thrilling films, behind only Psycho.[88] Jaws was number one in the Bravo network's five-hour miniseries The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004).[89] Similarly, the Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 6th scariest film ever made.[90] The film was also featured in lists by Entertainment Weekly,[91] Film4,[92] TV Guide,[93][94] Rolling Stone,[95] and Vanity Fair.[96]
In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.[97] In 2006, the screenplay of Jaws was selected by the Writers Guild of America as the 63rd best screenplay of all time.[98]
Jaws was a key film in establishing the benefits of a wide national release backed by heavy media advertising, rather than a progressive release that let a film slowly enter new markets and build support over a period of time.[57] It was also the first film to successfully use "wide release" as a distribution pattern, changing the then-usual handling of film distribution and marketing,[53] and helped estabilish the summer season as the period for studios to release high profile productions.[99] Jaws and Star Wars are retrospectively considered to have marked the beginning of the new business model in American filmmaking centered around "high concept" films - with premises that can be easily described and marketed - as well as the beginning of the end of the New Hollywood period.[57][100]
Similar to the fear of showers created by the pivotal scene in the 1960 film Psycho, Jaws caused many viewers to be afraid to enter the ocean.[101][102] The film was credited with reduced beach attendance in the summer of 1975.[43] Although it is considered a thriller-horror classic, the film is recognized as being responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes about sharks and their behavior.[103] Conservationists credit the film with the so-called "Jaws effect", which allegedly inspired "legions of fishermen [who] piled into boats and killed thousands of the ocean predators in shark-fishing tournaments."[104] Author Peter Benchley stated that he would not have written the original novel had he known what sharks are really like in the wild.[105] Benchley later wrote Shark Trouble, a non-fiction book about shark behavior, and Shark Life, another non-fiction book describing his dives with sharks. Conservation groups have bemoaned the fact that the film has made it considerably harder to convince the public that sharks should be protected.[106]
Jaws set the template for many future horror films, so much so that the script for Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction film Alien was pitched to studio executives as "Jaws in space."[107] Many films based on man-eating monsters, usually aquatic, were released through the 1970s and 1980s, such as Orca, Grizzly, Alligator, Day of the Animals, and Eaten Alive, with Spielberg himself saying Joe Dante's Piranha was "the best of the Jaws ripoffs".[79] Italy produced the mockbusters Great White —[108] which inspired a plagiarism lawsuit by Universal —,[109] Monster Shark —[110] featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000 under the title Devil Fish —[111] and Cruel Jaws — which features footage from Jaws and Jaws 2,[112] and is also known as Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws.[113]
Martha's Vineyard celebrated the film's 30th anniversary in 2005 with a festival titled "JawsFest",[114] which is scheduled to have its second edition in 2012.[115] In the 2000s, an independent group of fans produced a feature-length documentary. The Shark is Still Working was released in 2011, and features interviews with a range of cast and crew from the film, and some from the sequels. It is narrated by Roy Scheider and dedicated to Peter Benchley, who died in 2006.[116][117]
The first Laserdisc title marketed in North America was the MCA DiscoVision release of Jaws in 1978. A second Laserdisc was released in 1991, before a third and final release came under the MCA/Universal Home Video's "Signature Collection" imprint in 1995. This release was an elaborate boxset, which included the film, along with deleted scenes and outtakes, a new two-hour documentary on the making of the film, a copy of the novel Jaws, and a CD of John Williams's soundtrack. A year after its MCA DiscoVision release, it returned to theaters for a special 2-week limited engagement. It was also released on VHS by MCA Home Video in the mid 1980s and in 1995 by MCA Universal Home Video as a Collector's Edition featuring a making-of retrospective. MCA Universal Home Video released it on VHS again in 1997 as a THX-certified Special Widescreen Edition featuring a 10-minute special introduction at the beginning of the tape which was shown previously on the 1995 VHS.[118] The 1995 VHS sold 800,000 units in North America.[119]
Jaws was first released on DVD in 2000 for the film's 25th anniversary.[119] It featured a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film (an edited version of the one featured on the 1995 laserdisc release), with interviews from Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Benchley and other cast and crew members. Other extras included deleted scenes, outtakes, trailers, production photos, and storyboards.[118] The DVD shipped one million copies in just one month.[120] In June 2005, a special 30th anniversary DVD was released at the JawsFest festival in Martha's Vineyard.[114] The new edition had many extras seen in the previous editions, including the full two-hour documentary produced by Laurent Bouzereau for the LaserDisc, and added a previously unavailable interview with Spielberg conducted on the set of Jaws in 1974.[121]
It has been confirmed by Spielberg that a Blu-ray release is in the works.[122]
The film spawned three sequels, all of which failed to match the success of the original. Indeed, their combined domestic grosses barely cover half of the original's.[123] Spielberg was unavailable to do a sequel, as he was working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Richard Dreyfuss.[79] Jaws 2 was directed by Jeannot Szwarc; Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, and Jeffrey Kramer reprised their roles from the original film. It is generally regarded as the best of the sequels.[124] The next film, Jaws 3-D, directed by Joe Alves and starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr., was released in the 3-D format, although the effect did not transfer to television or home video, where it was renamed Jaws 3.[125][126] Jaws: The Revenge, directed by Joseph Sargent, featured the return of Lorraine Gary and starred Michael Caine, is considered one of the worst movies ever made.[127][128] While all three sequels made a profit at the box office (Jaws 2 and Jaws 3-D are among the top 20 highest-grossing films of their respective years), critics and audiences were generally dissatisfied with the films.[129][130][131]
In February 2010, film website Cinema Blend reported that a source from Universal Pictures has indicated that Universal is "strongly considering" remaking Jaws in 3-D, following the commercial success of Avatar.[132] The source also reported that 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan was considered to portray Matt Hooper in the remake, which they say could be more comedic and make more use of special effects.[133] The studio has not officially commented upon the rumor.[134][135]
The film has inspired two theme park rides: one at Universal Studios Florida,[136] which closed in January 2012,[137] and one at Universal Studios Japan.[138] There have also been two musical adaptations: JAWS The Musical!, which premiered in the summer of 2004 at the Minnesota Fringe Festival; and Giant Killer Shark: The Musical, which premiered in the summer of 2006 at the Toronto Fringe Festival.[139] Three video games based on the film were released: 1987's Jaws, developed by LJN for the Nintendo Entertainment System;[140] 2006's Jaws Unleashed by Majesco Entertainment for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and PC;[141] and 2011's Jaws: Ultimate Predator, also by Majesco, for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii.[142] A mobile game by Bytemark was also released in 2010 for the iPhone.[143] Aristocrat made an officially licensed slot machine based on the movie.[144]
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