scary stuff

Rating: Null/10 (31 August 2004)

It left a generation of schoolkids afraid to go into a swimming pool, let alone back into the water. Wunderkind Spielberg's story is all the scarier for hardly ever showing the Great White that is most of the characters' nemesis
Spielberg was still in his twenties when he signed up to direct the shark movie that would transform his career - and Hollywood itself. The production was notoriously chaotic yet, with the help of a major marketing campaign, Jaws became the biggest box office success ever, until the release of Star Wars the next year.
The cast is top-notch. Scheider is police chief Brody, a hydrophobe taking up his new posting on Amity Island off America's East Coast. His buddies in battling the killer fish are rich-kid ichthyologist Hooper (Dreyfuss) and maverick fisherman Quint (Shaw). The film has political undertones - it is marked by a post-Watergate distrust of authority - but also owes a debt in its theme of self and mutual reliance to those twin classic 50s westerns of contrasting political colours: High Noon and Rio Bravo.

John William's great and justly revered score is instantly evocative of the film and its power to terrify, and there are several stand-out shock moments and wonderfully sustained suspense scenes. But the film's real master stroke - keeping the monster unseen for as long as possible - was, ironically, forced on the production by the refusal of the various mechanical sharks to function on demand.