I've never seen the second, third or fourth installments in the Jaws series, but I'm willing to bet they are far less entertaining than the original one that started them all. The folklore and trivia surrounding the making of the 1975 blockbuster hit is the stuff of legend. The movie, which would become the highest grossing film of all time up to that point, was plagued with production difficulties, particularly the main character, a mechanical shark that wouldn't work properly once placed in the water. The shooting schedule was consequently a conceptual nightmare, and the studio wasn't even sure at first that the film would even be able tread water financially, so to speak. Of course, it went on to break box office records and introduce Hollywood to the concept of summertime popcorn movies, as well as becoming one of the most studied and critically-heralded commercial movies of all time.
For all the suspense and gasps that Jaws induces though, its success lies not in the number of times the vicious great white shark is seen, but in how often the viewer believes the shark to be present and lurking beneath the waters. Director Steven Spielberg employs a number of techniques to allow us to visualize the shark without actually showing it until well into the picture. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, several of these scenes would come off as gimmicks, but here Spielberg uses creativity to propel the storytelling and the result is very little contrivance and a heightened degree of suspense.
It's the Fourth of July weekend on Amity Island, and the mayor (a splendidly-costumed Murray Hamilton) anticipates lots of big bucks rolling into the small community. The police chief Martin Brady (Roy Scheider) is hesitant to open the beaches after a pair of shark attacks occur back-to-back (both sequences are efficiently effective). Eventually, a marine biologist named Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) shows up and backs Brady's claims that the island does, indeed, have a problem.
Spielberg adapted much of the screenplay himself, which is based on Peter Benchley's novel. There are a lot of elements that hearken back to other source material. Robert Shaw's character, the gruff Quint, is a thinly-veiled, modern Captain Ahab, haunted by a tragic memory which is divulged later on in the film in a marvellously-delivered monologue. Many of the camera angles and shots are reminiscent of the late Alfred Hitchcock, undoubtedly an influence here. The final act of the movie, with the trio of Quint, Hooper and Brady searching to defeat the great white, seems part David and Goliath tale, part Moby Dick adventure.
The performers are believable, revealing as much humanity as is necessary to keep us rooting for the people, since the temptation is there to also be siding with the great white too. There are parts of Jaws that seem relatively tame by today's standards, but that's only because over the years, subsequent filmmakers have had to up the gore factor to compensate for lack of ingenuity. The movie would be Spielberg's first notice to the world he would be a success, and to this day it remains one of his best.
