Jaws should never have been this good. The novel by Peter Benchley is an efficient thriller let down by extraneous extramarital plotlines and truly dreadful sex scenes; director Steven Spielberg had never made a movie on this scale before; the shark kept breaking down; production dragged on forever; the script was being rewritten during (and indeed after) principal photography; and heck, bottom line, it’s just a killer shark movie.
And yet… has there ever been a movie as complete as this one? A movie where every single element – plot, dialogue, performances, direction, cinematography, editing, score – is just flawless? A movie that sets out exactly what it wants to do and then just goes ahead and does it, efficiently and impeccably, from first to final frame? If you were really determined to pick holes you might point to one slightly clunky special effects moment when the shark gobbles poor Robert Shaw, but if you’re not wholly immersed by that point you’re never going to be.
Every single element is flawless
For many filmgoers of a certain age – thanks in large part to an extremely generous PG certificate – Jaws was the first horror movie they saw, and scenes from it branded themselves onto their brains, and from there onto the culture at large: the opening kill, so bloodless and so disturbing; the nails on the blackboard; the head in the boat, still one of the great throat-grabbers (even if it was shot in editor Verna Fields’ swimming pool); the reverse-dolly shot up to Roy Scheider’s horrified face; the USS Indianapolis speech; ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat’.
Then of course there was the release schedule: thanks to some ecstatic early screenings Universal knew they were on to a winer, gambling everything on an unprecedented wide release and massive media blitz, turning this largely unheralded monster movie into the first true blockbuster. To a great extent, modern cinema starts here.
Find out where it lands on our list of the 100 greatest movies ever made.
What to watch next:
Duel (1971); Piranha (1978); Jurassic Park (1993)