JAWS REDUX: SPIELBERG SUMMER Continues!
Hello, friends! Our little stroll through the Steven Spielberg films of the 1970’s resumes this week as The First Annual Spielberg Summer continues.
Today, we’ve reached the first truly bigger-than-life, overwhelming movie in his oeuvre. JAWS is on the short list of most important movies ever made, even if you’re only measuring individual impact on the trajectory of Hollywood and filmmaking (and to be clear, JAWS stands on its own fins even when stripped of that context). If you’re part of a certain generation of film fan, it’s almost certainly one of the movies that got you into movies in the first place.
It’s possible some of you have been waiting for this article since Spielberg Summer began. Perhaps you’ve been looking forward to a brief history of the famously-snakebitten production, and how Spielberg managed to turn chicken shit into chicken salad by allowing significant mechanical failures (say it with with me now, “they couldn’t get the shark to work”) to actually enhance the film’s drama, conflicts and terror, cloaking the titular beast in the shadows of the audience’s mind and imagination. You likely are anxious to celebrate JAWS’ second-to-none cast, especially the main trio of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. It’d be wise to talk about how fully developed Sgt. Brody really is, and how his fear of the water and his drive for integrity are constantly thrown into conflict by a never-ending set of exterior circumstances. Hell, a good discussion could be had about how beautifully the largely land based first half informs the waterlogged second half, by establishing stakes and psychologies before sending everybody out to sea.
It’d be a good article to write this week.
Except, well….I’ve written it already.
Yeah, I’ve previously talked about JAWS, and it wasn’t even that long ago. About two years ago, in this very (differently branded) space, I did a summer series on the entire JAWS franchise, including the famous 3D sequel, as well as the not-so-famous Italian knock-off sequel CRUEL JAWS. I can’t speak to the actual quality of that article, although I was two years less good than I am now, so you can run your own math and make that determination for yourself. My point is, what was created in 2022 is more or less the same article I would have written now.
It’s a mildly interesting conundrum I find myself in; this is the first time I’m writing a second article about a movie. Obviously, I knew this was going to be a problem going into this first round of Spielberg retrospectives, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what fresh angle to take. I tried to resist the idea of just rerunning that one under the Crittical Analysis brand, as that comes with an implied level of laziness there that I wasn’t ready to reconcile within myself. But, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t coming up with a better alternative; after all, JAWS is a difficult movie to find new unique angles about fifty years later.
But, then…the Monday before the Fourth of July, I had the opportunity to see JAWS in an actual, genuine movie theater for maybe the first time ever.
And it was like seeing it for the first time.
“Oh, new angle.”
This week’s article might be a little briefer than others in this series, and certainly a little different. But my last experience with JAWS was a genuinely different one, and I would remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to document it.
So here it is. JAWS!
JAWS (1975)
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Starring: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton
Released: June 20, 1975
Length: 124 minutes
The ability to watch a classic film on the big screen is one of life’s amazing little treats. It can often feel like the difference between seeing the Mona Lisa actually hanging in the Louvre and looking at a photo of it on your phone. You get the idea either way, but actually being in Paris, seeing it at its actual intended size, surrounded by other human beings, all there to do the same thing…it’s just a whole different experience.
Unfortunately, the ability to actually see classic films in a theater often depends on where you live. If you live in a major city, or at least within the proximity of one, you’re usually in good shape. You will likely have the ability to throw a dart randomly at the newspaper movie listings* and land on the opportunity to see one of the greatest movies ever made, usually well within driving distance.
*I know that there are no such things as “movie listings” or “newspapers'' anymore, but I don’t think the dart metaphor works as well with a laptop or phone screen. Don’t want anybody cracking their screens, ya know? You’ll just have to indulge me on this one.
If you live in a mid-to-small market like I do, however, you’re usually at the mercy of the small handful of revival houses that you have. I can only speak for myself, but in Sacramento, CA, there are three places in town and one of them (The Dreamland Cinema) is teeny-tiny. That leaves The Tower and The Crest for your revivals and that is literally it. Oh, sure, we have lots of regular movie theaters, but most of the chain mega-plexes in town have stopped doing Flashback Features long ago. So it’s just these three locations holding down the fort right now. At least two of them feel under constant threat of closure.
Luckily, I live down the street from one of them (the Tower), and they seem to be relatively awake at the wheel. Not only is there a consistent stream of repertory screenings throughout the year, they appear to be paying attention to the time of year in which they’re screening. It’s how people in town can see a whole festival of Hitchcock movies in October. It’s how my wife and I got to see WHEN HARRY MET SALLY… on New Year’s Eve last year. It’s also what allowed us to see JAWS on a big screen the week of July 4th.
We had seen other classic screenings at this theater before, and we had never been in danger of being the only people there or anything, but it truly shocked me at just how many people showed up to JAWS that night. It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise; after all, we’re talking about one of the most famous and popular movies ever made even to this day, the movie that more or less invented the “summer blockbuster”*. But, really, I had never seen the Tower lobby that full before that night. Again, this was a Monday night. That was the first sign that we were potentially in for a special night.
*Yes, this means you can technically draw a straight line between JAWS and DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Whether this is a mark for it or a knock against it, I’ll leave for you to determine.
The second sign that magic was in the air came relatively early on, when the entire town of Amity gathers in the police station following the gruesome death of little Alex Kintner, crowding around Sheriff Brody (Scheider) and Mayor Larry Vaughn (Hamilton), demanding an explanation and plan of action from their leadership. As Brody struggles to wrangle the masses, the nasty sound of fingernails scratching across a chalkboard cuts through the din. Everyone turns around to see the grizzled shark hunter Quint (Shaw).
The scene becomes dead silent.
In the movie theater, however, the room filled with the sound of something like four beers all cracking open at once.
The crowd was locked in. Summer had begun.
It really is something to watch a classic crowd-pleaser work its magic and…well…please the crowd! What follows is a list of just ten of the endless amounts of JAWS moments that absolutely crushed that night:
Brody telling a fellow beach-goer “That’s some bad hat, Harry.”
The guy who exclaims “A whaaaaat?”
The corpse popping out of the busted hull of that sunken ship (no, seriously, this one killed. Screams in the audience and everything).
Brody filling his glass near the brim with red wine.
“Michael, did you hear your father? Get out of the water now!”
Quint crushing his beer can with one hand, followed by Hooper weakly crushing his styrofoam cup.
Hooper screaming “aye aye” to Quint in that intensely sarcastic pirate voice.
The USS Indianapolis speech (the room was dead silent, no beer cracking this time).
Pretty much every Quint rendition of “Farewell and Adieu”.
It all reminded me of two things: one, I reflected back on the Big Important Issue in the far-away year of 2019, where Martin Scorsese declared Marvel movies as not cinema, but theme parks. As you may remember, this triggered responses from James Gunn and Joss Whedon (back when Whedon felt compelled to make a statement about anything at all). It also drew ire from superhero fans all across the Internet; it still appears to be a sore spot for some to this day.
And, look, I’m not here to re-litigate a wound. Although I do find the reaction overblown relative to what is ultimately just a qualified opinion (as far as I know, Scorsese didn’t say “and you’re all dipshits for watching them”, he just said they weren’t cinema to him), I get that it can be annoying to devote your free time to something that gets dismissed so broadly by somebody with authority. That said, speaking as someone who has found enjoyment in both the MCU and Scorsese films, the reason I never got worked up about Marty’s comments is because “theme park attraction” is neither an inaccurate description of what modern superhero movies ultimately are, nor does it need to be a pejorative term in and of itself, so long as the movie in question is a well-built and thoughtfully constructed roller coaster.
What are theme park rides, after all? They are mechanisms for us to take a break from our lives, even if just for a little bit, in order to put ourselves in some artificial danger and generate some thrills and emotions together, even if we’re all walking in as strangers. It’s something for us to enjoy together as people. The best ones work even if you’ve ridden it over and over. At their finest, movies are roller-coasters.
JAWS is a pitch-perfect example of that. On July 1st, 2024, a bunch of people filed into the main room of the Tower Theatre with just one commonality (“I wanna watch JAWS tonight!”), paying to see a movie we all probably already owned at home and had almost certainly all seen multiple times since childhood. And, you know what? The roller coaster was just as fucking good today as it was when we all first rode it decades ago. In truth, it hits all the more when you have a forged, temporary community to ride it with.
(Of course, JAWS isn’t just mindless thrills and chills, it’s also well-built in terms of setting up its characters and stakes, which makes us as an audience care, which makes the moments of action and terror hit all the more because we’re bought in, but now I’m getting into first article territory here. I just bring it up because this is the element that some of the MCU movies lack, especially some of the latter-day ones, after characters got firmly established and the ability to coast on good vibes became available. Again, just in my opinion as a fan. Anyway.)
That brings me to my second thing: it’s more fun to see a movie in theaters. It just is. And there so many things currently working against the in-person experience right now. For one, watching movies at home has never become more technically convenient; even the ability to afford one or two streaming services gives you access to a never-ending array of movies of all types, age, and quality. For two, movie tickets have obviously skyrocketed in price, just in time for inflation to grow out of control and wages to seemingly stagnate across the board, making a trip to the movies an easy luxury to cut in tough times (especially if you have a child or two).
For three (and, I think, final…I know I’m currently in a numbered list within a numbered list, I promise I’m going somewhere), the in-person experience just may not be available depending on where you live. Going back to the beginning of this article that is technically about JAWS, especially when it comes to classic cinema, you may just be completely fucked if there’s no house in town that screens them. This can be especially brutal considering, if you run in any sort of cinephile circles for more than ten minutes, you’ll run into the common piece of wisdom that “if you didn’t see [insert movie], you didn’t see it right”. It’s a frustrating thing to come across when your options are to watch a movie on the Criterion Channel at home, or not see it at all.
My point being…if you have the opportunity to see a beloved movie from any decade, and it even slightly works for you in terms of time, distance, and finance…grab it with all ten fingers and just do it. You’ll be very unlikely to regret it. JAWS on July 1st, 2024 was a good illustration as to why. Here is a movie playing out in front of me, one that I had seen probably a dozen times in my thirty-six years on Earth, and it was like a brand new adventure. People were screaming. Hooting and hollering. Cracking open their beers when something cool as fuck was happening.
There was nothing like it. It was clear as day at that moment why JAWS and Steven Spielberg helped change Hollywood filmmaking forever.
I can’t wait to do it again. After all, the damn thing is turning fifty next year.
But until then….farewell and adieu.