The man who makes B-movies on an A-movie budget

Rating: 7/10 (1 August 2008)

The British film critic Barry Norman once described Steven Spielberg as the man who makes B-movies on an A-movie budget. That sounds like a devastating put-down, but I don't think Norman meant it as such. What he meant was that Spielberg borrowed themes from the cheap and cheerful science-fiction and adventure stories he had known in his youth and then gave those themes the full, glossy A-movie treatment. "Jaws" is a case in point. If a film on this subject had been made twenty (or even ten) years earlier it would probably have had some lurid title such as "The Giant Killer Shark Horror" and have been made on a very low budget with comically bad special effects. It would doubtless have disappeared from view almost completely, only surfacing for occasional late-night showings on specialist movie channels, probably on a double bill with something like "The Blood Beast Terror" or "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". (I am not making that last one up; there really was a film with that title).
"Jaws" is set on the island of Amity, somewhere off the north-east coast of the USA. (The film was actually shot on Martha's Vineyard). The film is a mixture of disaster movie and hunting epic. It is something of a convention in disaster films that the disaster should be either caused or exacerbated by human stupidity, negligence or greed, and "Jaws" is no exception. After a young woman is killed by a shark while out swimming, the local police chief Martin Brody wants to close the beaches, but allows himself to be overruled by the town's mayor and councillors who argue that the girl's death could in fact have been the result of her being struck by a propeller. They are motivated by the fact that the island is a popular holiday resort, dependent upon the income it receives from tourists, and any hint of a man-eating shark in the area would be economically disastrous. (There was a very similar plot line in the 1990s disaster film, "Dante's Peak", although that concerned a volcano rather than a shark).
Of course, Brody is proved right and the shark strikes again, causing panic on the beach and killing a young boy. Soon afterwards a shark is caught, and the relieved local politicians announce that this is the one that was responsible for the two deaths. One man, however, is not convinced. Matt Hooper, an ichthyologist, believes from the wounds on the two bodies that the shark that has been caught was too small to have carried out the attacks. Hooper and Brody, who is suffering from feelings of guilt over the boy's death, charter a boat, skippered by a local fisherman named Quint, to hunt down the true culprit.
Although the film was made more than thirty years ago, it has dated well, despite the many advances in cinema technology that have occurred since then. Today the shark would probably be conjured up by CGI, but in 1975 Spielberg had to rely upon a mechanical model. As this model frequently malfunctioned, we do not, in fact, see the shark all that often, although this probably adds to the film's effectiveness by making the scenes in which it does appear all the more frightening. Also very effective is John Williams's simple but eerie theme tune; like Bernard Herrman's score for "Psycho" this demonstrates that the most effective film music is not always that which would sound best in the concert hall.
Roy Scheider as Brody and Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper play their parts well, but I have never really liked Robert Shaw's eccentric Quint. Although Quint does not actually have a wooden leg, a gold earring or a parrot squawking "Pieces of Eight", Shaw seems to have fallen victim to the curse of overacting which frequently afflicts film stars called upon to portray members of the seafaring profession. (He was much better in "A Man for All Seasons" and "The Sting"). The film has other weaknesses; at times it appears improbable (could a shark really batter its way into an iron cage so easily?) and at others, particularly in the first half, overlong. Overall, however, "Jaws" is a reasonably good film, and in the second half, when the great shark hunt is under way, manages to be both thrilling and, at times, genuinely frightening.
Nevertheless, I certainly would not agree with all those who have voted it into your top 100 films (it is currently at #97). It was only Spielberg's second feature film, and his first major success, and I suspect that its continuing popularity owes as much to its place in the Spielberg canon as it does to its intrinsic merits. I have never been an adherent of the quasi-religious Cult of the Great Director which has grown up around Spielberg; he has made some excellent films, notably the brilliant "Schindler's List", but these have normally been when he has tried to produce something of greater significance than the popcorn blockbusters which have constituted much of his output. "Jaws" is a well-made and exciting adventure film, but at the end of the day it is still only a B-movie made on an A-movie budget. 7/10