Hitchcock and Jaws
Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, was born on August 13 1899, he still continues to wow and influence us with the likes of The 39 Steps, Psycho, North By Northwest and The Birds.
Universal Studios was his home, and he'd be a huge influence on the young director of that that other Universal hot property Jaws, Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg has been quoted as saying that: “The shark not working was a god send. It made me become more like Alfred Hitchcock. When I didn’t have control of my shark it made me kind of rewrite the whole script without the shark.”
And certainly echoes of both Psycho and The Birds can be found in the killer shark thriller that is still enthralling audiences today.
Being on the same backlot you'd expect that both Spielberg and Hitchcock would have been able to meet and talk to each other lots, but they never did meet. Not that it wasn't through lack of Spielberg's trying.
We explore some of those missed meetings and those influences that Hitch's films had on Jaws.
Cameo appearances
Hitchcock was famous for appearing fleetingly in his own films, in fact he liked to get it over and done with as he knew audiences woukd be looking for him. Spielberg's voice also cameos in Jaws, talking to Quint on the radio asking if Ellen Brody can speak to the Chief.
Torn Curtain
Spielberg famously snuck onto the Universal backlot when he was younger, one of these times he wandered into the set of the 1966 Hitchcock film, Torn Curtain. He was soon booted off. If he hadn't been he might have bumped into one of the members of the art department, Joe Alves, who would of course go onto to be production designer on Jaws and Jaws 2, and direct Jaws 3D. He also worked with Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Vertigo
To show James Stewart's characters vertigo to the audience a new shot was devised, the dolly zoom. It was created by Irmin Roberts, a Paramount second-unit cameraman. The Vertigo shot would later be used masterfully by Bill Butler when Chief Brody sees the attack on Alex Kintner. It's now commonplace in everything from Goodfellas to Lord of the Rings and Event Horizon, but everyone still calls it the Jaws shot.
Psycho
Both Jaws and Psycho rely heavily on music to draw in their audience, the Bernard Herrmann score using strings to emulate the stabbing of the knife and the music of John Williams essentially playing the shark.
Each films have iconic death scenes involving naked women in water, one the murder of Marion Crane in the shower, the other the death of Chrissie Watkins in the opening moments. Both are memorable and oft imitated.
Psycho and Jaws also had money and greed at their centre, the green stuff puts the characters in the path of a very different but no less deadly killer and helps drive the plots forward. In Psycho it is Marion stealing the money for her and her boyfriend, and in Jaws it is Mayor Vaughn keeping the beaches upon for the summer dollars and Quint later demands $10,000 to catch the shark.
The Birds
Both Jaws and The Birds are based on books, The Birds by Daphne du Maurier was first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree. Both are about nature versus man and take place in small coastal towns.
I'd also argue that the discovery of Ben Gardner's head in Jaws also doffs its cap (well, it would if he had any hands) to the discovery of the body with its eyes pecked out.
Family Plot
This was to be Hitchcock's final film, which was also his only film to feature a score by John Williams. It was also during the filming that Spielberg would try for his second close encounter of the Hitchcock kind.
As recounted in In Stephen Schochet’s 2001 audio book Tales of Hollywood, one morning Hitchcock’s routine was interrupted by “an uninvited young man hovering around [his] movie set”.
This was 1975, post release of the then highest grossing film of all time. Family Plot would be released the following year. Did Hitchcock welcome the young director with welcome arms to congratulate him on his success? Did he enthuse over the great marketing campaign that even Hitch would have been proud of?
No. He refused to meet him and was removed by a crew member. This is all backed up in the memoir of Bruce Dern, who starred in Family Plot. His daughter, Laura, would if course go onto feature in Spielberg's Jurassic Park.
In his book, Dern tried to convince Hitchcock to meet the young director.
“I said, ‘You’re his idol. He just [wants] to sit at your feet for five minutes and chat with you’, Dern wrote, stating that Hitchcock flat out refused – and explained his reason why.
“He said, ‘Isn’t that the boy who made the fish movie? I could never sit down and talk to him ... because I look at him and feel like such a whore’.”
Dern continued: “I said, ‘Why do you feel Spielberg makes you a whore?’ Hitch said, ‘Because I’m the voice of the Jaws ride [at the Universal Studios theme park]. They paid me a million dollars. And I took it and I did it. I’m such a whore. I can’t sit down and talk to the boy who did the fish movie. I couldn’t even touch his hand.”
And their hands or paths never did cross, Hitchcock passed away in April 1980. The voice of the Jaws ride comment is most likely referring to a voiceover for one of the parks trailers, which featured the Jaws ride. Hitchcock was never a voice on one of the rides. Either way, it's said that was the closest these two giants of cinema ever got.
Words by Dean Newman, Chief Writer The Daily Jaws
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