Why Jaws will ALWAYS be Steven Spielberg's best film

Jaws was the ultimate endurance test for its cast and crew. It took 159 days of location work, instead of the projected 55 and started filming without a script to avoid a writer’s strike, added to which, it’s toothy star was in the process of being tested (on land) and was proving to be quite the diva.

The movie has become a touchstone and a 24 carat gold standard for filmmakers ever since. Spielberg would be hailed as the new crown prince of Hollywood and Jaws would become his most revered work, even though during the endless days of little or no footage, he seriously feared for his career.

So how exactly did this movie about a small town on the East Coast of the United States go from what Richard Dreyfuss reckoned would become “the turkey of all time” to quite probably its director’s greatest achievement?

Just Keep Swimming…

Susan Backlinie played Chrissie Watkins, the first vicim in the Jaws saga

Location

The decision to film on Martha’s Vineyard was something the studio warned Spielberg about but as he’s readily admitted “I was young and I was stupid” and felt the movie should eschew the backlot to be the best it could be. He wanted authenticity, real locations and local colour, so he cast a lot of non-actors to populate the background and take minor roles rather than using all seasoned actors - even if they might be easier to direct.

State Beach in Oak Bluffs was transformed to a real-life movie set when Jaws was filmed more than 40 years ago (Vineyard Gazette archives / Edith Blake)

One of the most famous characters in Jaws (but not one of the major ones) is Ben Gardner. A local fisherman who off camera meets his match with Big Bruce. Portrayed by local Craig Kingsbury, he was a solid gold resource that Spielberg mined for lines of dialogue. Kingsbury was familiar sight on The Vineyard, rarely wearing shoes, one of his favourite pastimes was driving his team of oxen down Main Street - once even managing to be prosecuted for being “drunk in charge of a team of oxen”. Craig worked with Robert Shaw, assisting with his construction of Quint’s movie-stealing performance. Kingsbury enjoyed the job so much he’d concoct stories for the actor to repeat as truth. The most famous tale being that the majority of the islanders were secretly inbred, a ‘fact’ that Shaw relayed in a TV interview.

Martha’s Vineyard local Craig Kingsbury played doomed Amity fisherman Ben Gardner in Jaws

The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get

The filming of Jaws suffered from problems with wind, rain, tides, sailboats getting into shot, tourists, a lack of tourists and of course the stubbornly defective shark. Even though these trials nearly drove him mad, Spielberg knew that having to constantly fight for a vision focusses the mind. If life’s easy, you don’t try. You sit back and do a reasonable enough job but do you exceed expectations or break new ground? Of course not, you simply achieve mediocrity.

During all the delays, he and Carl Gottlieb honed the script, held actors workshops and the film shone because of it. Spielberg knew if he couldn’t rely on Bruce, he still needed to remind the audience he was still there. There had to be a real sense of dread in his audience and if he could do that, many of the problems brought on by his underperforming star might not matter too much. Fear of the shark, as opposed to seeing it full frame, became the movie’s secret weapon.

The unknown can be far scarier than anything we might see. It plays on our minds, nagging at us, warning us to keep our guard up. We become like the Posner family that Mayor Vaughn convinces to get in the water on 4th July. But it’s doubtful they’ve ever seen a shark in their lives, yet their imaginations are bringing this horror to life, conjuring the most terrifying images possible.

And it’s exactly the same with the audience.

The Score

John Williams said the theme for the shark should “grind away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable.” For the most part it’s pretty simple, two notes, separated by only a semitone that became a signifier of impending doom and menace. They have transcended the movie and entered our shared vernacular, the same as lines from Henry V or Macbeth.

The notes can be played slowly or go full tilt like an express train, depending on what’s happening. But one thing they always do, is tell us the shark is there. This was vital to Williams, he felt there should be a ‘warning shot’ for the audience. In the underwater scenes, just prior to the two jokers with their cardboard fin, we witness the same sort of ‘pre-attack imagery’ and for a moment we suspect the shark is about to strike but then… its like a switch flips inside our heads - we sense something, somehow is amiss. But we can’t quite put our finger on it, we’re on edge. But then the danger drifts away again and we relax…

The next scene is amazing. It creeps up out of nowhere, sidles in quietly and waits for people to catch on to what’s happening.

Brody’s initial reaction to a distant warning that a shark’s going into the pond is a classic ‘Boy who Cried Wolf’ moment. Yeah right - it’s just another prank. Until Ellen reminds him: “Michael’s in the pond”.

Then we see the fin. The ominous tones float out towards us across the still waters as the dorsal slips beneath the surface…

Spielberg likes lots of music in his films (and wouldn’t you if you were mates with John Williams?) but he also knows when to let things go quiet. And it’s those decisions about the score that made Jaws so searingly effective.

It’s not all ‘DUUH DUM, DUUH DUM, DUUH DUM’ though, the soundtrack is filled with some of the most uplifting and intricate work of Williams’s career. Pieces like ‘Promenade’ as visitors disembark the ferry, spilling into Amity like a flood or the majestic, then playful ‘Out to Sea’ are like little forays into a more peaceful world. It’s about adventure and joy, echoing swashbuckling Hollywood epics like ‘Captain Blood’ or ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’, all the while splicing in the jaunty themes from the Jaws soundtrack, along with Quint’s favourite ‘Spanish Ladies’.

The last musical theme of the movie is, perhaps, could be greatest piece of music Williams has ever composed.

Simply called ‘End Title’ is a graceful, hopeful and reassuring farewell, telling us that everything’s fine, we survived. Now let’s just go home.

Of all the grand sweeping themes he’s written over his career from ‘Star Wars’ to ‘Close Encounters’, ‘ET’ or ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, this small piece of elegance and stillness - clocking in at just 2 minutes 21 seconds, can bring you to tears if you let it.

Photography

Spielberg was aware that everything about Jaws had to be spot on, and wanted a way to bring the audience close to the action, to make them feel like they were in as much danger as the swimmers.

To achieve this, Director of Photography, Bill Butler built a waterproof camera housing to allow the water lap against the lens. He also filmed nearly all the action for the final act handheld, wedging the camera against his body, taking the ‘roll’ as out of the footage by using his legs as shock absorbers.

At the time, Spielberg felt nervous about it, saying “he hadn’t planned on making a handheld picture” but in the end Butler’s vision was correct. There was just enough fluidity to give the viewer a sense that they too were onboard the Orca with the shark circling but not too much so they felt seasick.

The beach scene when Alex Kintner is taken by the shark is one of the movies many standout moments. Originally Spielberg wanted to do it in one take, but came up with the idea of using bathers in different coloured costumes to move in front of Brody so the audience’s perspective would change from what the Chief was seeing then back to his reaction with each flash of colour. The famous Dolly Zoom onto Brody was another factor to why Jaws is Spielberg’s greatest achievement.

The shot was used by Hitchcock in ‘Vertigo’ to signify a fear of heights with miniatures and cars in frame, making it more complex. In Jaws it’s a final hammer blow reaction shot when it dawns on Brody that he’s just witnessed the brutal death of a child. In that terrifying moment Brody’s face shows us not only horror but also that he knows that its down to him. If he’d stood up to the Mayor and demanded the beaches be closed, Alex would still be alive.

Quality Endures

Jaws is not only a horror - to class it as such is lazy. It’s a melodrama and a thriller, an examination of what drives us to do certain things and whether we’re able step up if circumstances demand it.

Spielberg has made other big thrill-ride movies. Jurassic Park was another book adaptation that reads like a sci-if thriller but also examines how scientific discovery gets bulldozed by greed and how ultimately everything comes crashing down. It had groundbreaking special effects that literally changed cinema forever, a cast of characters you actually cared about and managed to include some truly iconic moments - who knew ripples in a glass of water and a warning message on a wing mirror would pop up in everything from Doctor Who to Toy Story 2 and Dawson’s Creek?

But as great as it was, Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs couldn’t beat Jaws.

It’s lasted nearly 50 years and at it still draws people towards it - continuing to happily scare the living hell out of them. The money it amassed was phenomenal, eventually tapping out at a colossal $470,700,000. And all on a budget of $9million.

The movie to steal it’s box office crown of course was ‘Star Wars’, again a movie that none of the crew really believed in, the studio didn’t understand and even some of the cast poked fun at.

But George Lucas had been here before with ‘American Graffiti’, no one believed that’d be a hit either.

There’s a story about the time Lucas invited some of his friends to see a (very) rough cut of his big space fairytale - Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius and Steven Spielberg. What they saw was a bit of a mess with black and white WW2 footage spliced in to show where the dog fights would go, the guys weren’t exactly blown away.

Well, all except one, of course.

Steven Spielberg

He jumped out of his chair, exclaiming, “This is going to be the biggest movie of all time!” He’s not Nostradamus, he doesn’t have a crystal ball or a DeLorean with a flux-capacitor but what he probably knows more than anyone else is that if you have to struggle, fight to be heard and no one believes you, don’t worry JUST KEEP SHOOTING - you can achieve great things.

This is why Jaws is Spielberg’s best movie.

Spielberg beat the odds by thinking outside of the box and instead of creating an everyday ‘creature feature’ he invented the summer blockbuster and took over Hollywood.

Adversity breeds imagination, resilience and self reliance.

Success is not final; failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.

Words by Tim Armitage

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