WATERSHED (JAWS)

 

Steven Soderbergh was 12 when he knew he wanted to be a director.

His filmmaking epiphany occurred in a cinema in St Petersburg, Florida in the summer of 1975.

The movie showing that night was 'Jaws'.

Soderbergh explained to National Public Radio in the US 38 years later: "I had always seen a lot of films because my father loved movies, but in that two hours and four minutes, they went from something that I used to view as entertainment and became something else.

"And I had two questions when I came out of that theatre. One is, what does directed by mean, exactly? And who is Steven Spielberg?

"And luckily, there was a book that had been published around the time the movie came out called 'The Jaws Log', which was written by Carl Gottlieb, one of the co-screenwriters, and it turned out to be one of the best making-of books that anybody has ever produced and I bought a copy of that and read it over and over again and highlighted any mention of Steven Spielberg and what that job entailed.

"And from that point on I realised oh, this is a job you could have. This is a job."

                               

Forty years on from its release by Universal Pictures, 'Jaws' continues to inspire filmmakers.

In the 2013 Sight & Sound poll of filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino cited 'Jaws' as one of his 12 favourite films.

Christopher Nolan has admitted he is constantly striving as a director to recapture the magic of 'Jaws' and Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'.

Other fans include 'Boyz N The Hood' director John Singleton, 'X Men' and 'The Usual Suspects' director Bryan Singer, 'Martha Marcy May Marlene' director Sean Durkin and 'Take Shelter' director Jeff Nichols.

The success of 'Jaws' spawned Joe Dante's rip off 'Piranha' and Ridley Scott's sci fi monster classic 'Alien'.

But its influence can also be seen outside cinema, with the artist Damien Hirst admitting his celebrated 1991 art work “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” owed its origins to 'Jaws'.

So what is it about Spielberg's movie that still captivates audiences 50 years to the day?

As a reviewer, I have written before about going to see Spielberg's film in Belfast's Grove Cinema and how it made me fall in love with movies.

                                

'Jaws' was one of the first "event" movies I can recall.

Hollywood has always been good at marketing films but the producers of 'Jaws', Richard D Zanuck and David Brown and Universal took it to a whole new level.

Convinced they had a monster hit on their hands after test screenings in Dallas and Long Beach, they simply rewrote movie marketing rules.

Universal spent a record $1.8 million marketing Spielberg's film in the US in the biggest pre-release campaign in the studio's history.

Spot ads in newspapers and television stations across the US were blanket booked prior to the release and the filmmakers went on an 11 city tour to promote the film.

Merchandise was also produced, ranging from t-shirts and posters to toy sharks and shark's tooth necklaces.

As word of mouth travelled, cinema owners fell over themselves to book the film.

                             

Universal's boss Lew Wasserman limited 'Jaws' release to 464 in the US and Canada, paring back initial plans to release it on 900 screens because he wanted the film to run all summer.

"I don't want people in Palm Springs to see the picture in Palm Springs," Wasserman insisted.

"I want them to get into their cars and drive to see it in Hollywood."

It was a clever strategy.

'Jaws' immediately broke box office records - taking in $7 million in its opening weekend.

On the 78th day of its release, it surpassed Francis Coppola's 'The Godfather' as the highest grossing film in North America, breaking the $100 million barrier and it ran and ran in cinemas even after the summer had passed.

Unlike today, where most of the big movies are simultaneously released around the world, 'Jaws' had a six month run in North America before it was screened in other territories.

When it was eventually released internationally, 'Jaws' mirrored its record breaking performance in the US and Canada and broke box office records around the world.

                          

Spielberg's film had built up a fearsome reputation by the time it reached Asia, Europe, Australasia and South America.

Propelled by media hype and word of mouth, it was a surefire hit.

In subsequent years, Hollywood would build on the template Zanuck, Brown and Universal Studios had created.

Other blockbusters were marketed as events.

The 'Star Wars' trilogy, 'ET', the Indiana Jones movies, 'Ghostbusters', 'Back to the Future' and 'Titanic' would come and go and, in some cases, rake in even more money but they have not stood the test of time in the way that 'Jaws' has.

'Jaws' still lives up to its hype and then some.

The more you watch it, the more convinced you are of its perfection.

There isn't a single frame you could quibble with or a single performance that you can pick holes.

                              

Take the opening moments, beginning with John Williams' foreboding music and underwater scenes.

Many of us to this day have not experienced life underwater and so the initial deep sea images of fish and marine flora and fauna is hypnotic and yet slightly scary.

As the 'Jaws' theme music swells up into a Bernard Hermann 'Psycho' frenzy, Spielberg, like all great filmmakers, quickly switches tone to the sound of young people chilling out on the beach at dusk.

We have a close up of a young man playing a harmonica around a campfire and the camera starts to rove around in one take to a girl smoking a cigarette, a silhouetted couple kissing, the fire blazing, more young people including a guy playing a guitar and two girls sharing what might be a joint.

Amid all the chatter, Bill Butler's camera settles on a young man taking a swig of beer from a can, followed by a puff on a cigarette. He is staring offscreen.

Cut to the object of his affections, Susan Backlinie's blonde who appears in a puff of cigarette smoke and flirtatiously smiles.

After film editor Verna Fields cuts between the two, Spielberg opts for a long shot of the group with the young man getting up and plucking up the courage to chat to the

girl.

                                    

As the sea calmly ripples in the background, we can't quite hear their conversation but she rises and flirtatiously runs in the dunes with her drunken admirer in pursuit.

He asks her name - which is Chrissie - and then where they are going.

"Swimming," she declares, shedding her clothes and giggling, while her admirer drunkenly tumbles in the dunes.

The naked silhouette of Chrissie dives into a calm, silvery sea and swims out far, while her would-be suitor struggles to take off his shoes by the water's edge and collapses in a sluggish, drunken haze.

It's a great piece of scene setting narrative - the calm before the storm.

And then Spielberg cuts to Chrissie in close-up, followed by an underwater shot of her silhouetted body splashing on the surface of the sea.

There is a swell of harp and strings as the camera glides up towards her and yet, when he cuts to a shot of Chrissie from above, it still comes a shock to see her suddenly tugged from below.

The full horror of the shark attack kicks in as we see her screaming and she is pulled by an unseen force along the surface of the sea from left to right and eventually in a circular motion, while her companion lies on the beach oblivious to what is happening.

For the next 20 seconds, we see her thrashing about in the sea and screaming.

Spielberg cleverly gives his audience some false hope as she clings to a buoy, in a moment of brief respite from the attack.

Then suddenly Chrissie is pulled back into the sea, writhing in agony as she is pulled towards the camera in close-up.

In the space of three seconds, she disappears from view as she is pulled under the water.

Spielberg cuts to the tide pulling in and out against the shore as the young man sleeps, oblivious to what has just occurred.

The final shot is of the buoy whose bell tolls, symbolically marking the death of the young woman.

                                      

To this day, that opening sequence has not lost its potency.

It still shocks and still terrifies.

It is also typical of a movie that boasts an intelligently crafted screenplay, a cast and crew that are on top of their game and a resourceful director who instinctively knows what makes audiences tick.

So let's further breakdown and analyse these elements.

'Jaws' was adapted from a popular novel by Peter Benchley, who secured a screen credit, but it was honed by a number of top screenwriters.

Much of the donkey work on the script was done by Howard Sackler who declined a screenwriting credit and the legendary John Milius was also involved.

But it was the New York comedian and actor, Carl Gottleib who finally licked the script into shape.

Gottlieb had written for a number of TV comedy shows for Bob Newhart and the Smothers Brothers.

He penned Carl Reiner's comedy short 'The Absent Minded Waiter' with Teri Garr and Steve Martin and would team up with Reiner and Martin again on 'The Jerk'.

There is no doubt Gottleib brought a much needed comic sensibility to the film - wringing humour out of the bleakest of circumstances and giving the audiences respite from the tension in much of Spielberg's film.

                                      

And so, we have the visual gag of a defaced Amity Island tourism poster featuring a bikini clad woman, with a shark fin in the sea and a speech bubble emblazoned with the words: "Help Shark!"

There's the delightful sequence where Robert Shaw's hard as nails fisherman Quint and Richard Dreyfuss's marine biologist Hooper drunkenly bond on board the boat while sharing stories about their scars, much to the amusement of Roy Scheider's chief of police Martin Brody.

But the movie's darkest and most celebrated piece of writing is also in this sequence - the famous USS Indianapolis speech which brilliantly explains the experiences that have shaped Quint into the man he is.

Originally conceived by Sackler, the speech was three quarters of a page long. Milius took the speech and turned it into what Spielberg recalls was a 10 page masterpiece.

However it was Robert Shaw, a playwright as well as an actor, who pared it back into the powerful monologue we know today.

Like any great film, not every idea in 'Jaws' is original.

Gottleib and Spielberg drew inspiration from Henrik Ibsen's classic play 'An Enemy of the People' and Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick'.

And it is these two influences that give 'Jaws' its dramatic heft.

                                    

The first half of the movie is pure Ibsen as Brody struggles to persuade Murray Hamilton's Mayor Vaughn and the people of Amity Island that the threat they face is serious.

Brodie encounters the same kind of hostility as Dr Stockmann in Ibsen's play whose concerns about the contamination of his town's hot springs are downplayed because of economic concerns.

The second half of 'Jaws' is pure 'Moby Dick' as Brody, Hooper and the Captain Ahab like Quint board their boat, the Orca for an epic showdown with the shark.

If these literary inspirations provide the heft, its trio of lead actors do the heavy lifting.

It could have been so different, though.

Initially Roy Scheider was not Spielberg's first choice as Brody.

Robert Duvall was offered the role but he had his eyes instead on Quint.

Charlton Heston was considered too but Spielberg was reluctant because of the screen baggage he would bring.

He eventually settled on Scheider, who was virtually unknown other than his Oscar nominated supporting turn as Detective Buddy Russo in William Friedkin's 'The French Connection'.

Not only did Scheider provide the beating heart in Spielberg's film but his casting set the template for future blockbusters and their tendency not to cast A List stars in the lead role.

He also came up with one of the movie's best lines, the quip: "We're going to need a bigger boat!"

Richard Dreyfuss too was, remarkably, not the first choice for Hooper.

                                    

Jon Voight was the actor Spielberg originally wanted and Jeff Bridges, Joel Grey and Timothy Bottoms were all in the mix.

However it was on the recommendation of George Lucas that Dreyfuss landed the part after they worked together on 'American Graffiti'.

The role of Quint was originally offered to Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden before it came Robert Shaw's way and that was on the back of his performance as the villain, Doyle Lonnegan in George Roy Hill's caper movie, 'The Sting'.

If Scheider was the heart of Spielberg's movie and Dreyfuss the brains, then Shaw was definitely the muscle.

Initially, Shaw wasn't keen on Benchley's book but he was persuaded to take the part by his wife, Mary Ure and his secretary as they had been right before about him starring in 'From Russia With Love'.

As he prepared to play Quint, Shaw observed New England fishermen closely and developed a hard as nails persona on and off the set - needling Richard Dreyfuss.

But this tension between two very different types of actors worked to the benefit the film and, as anyone who saw Dreyfuss's teary encounter in 2014 with Shaw's granddaughter on RTE's chat show 'The Late, Late Show,' it is clear there was a lot of admiration there.

Spielberg and Gottleib took advantage of the tension onset with the wonderful faux macho face off early on the Orca's voyage.

                                     

In one of the most amusing sequences of the film, we see the sneering fisherman drinking a can of beer and crushing it. 

In a wonderful moment of self-deprecation, Hooper also sneers while crushing a white plastic cup.

Shaw was famously drunk when he had his first crack at USS Indianapolis speech and apologised to Spielberg for turning in a below par performance.

Spielberg recalled how full of remorse, Shaw rather "sweetly" persuaded him to have another go and turned in the barnstorming delivery of the speech the next day.

The stunned reactions of Scheider and Dreyfuss onscreen are natural reactions of actors bowled over by Shaw's electric delivery of a great piece of writing.

It remains baffling to this day why Shaw was not shortlisted in the Best Supporting Actor category in the 1976 Oscars race.

But 'Jaws' treatment at the Oscars still bemuses.

Spielberg's movie landed a Best Picture nomination but nothing for its director, its actors or its screenplay.

                          

Admittedly, there was fierce competition that year from Milos Forman's 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', Robert Altman's 'Nashville', Federico Fellini's 'Amacord' and Sidney Lumet's 'Dog Day Afternoon'.

But as great as Stanley Kubrick was, did he really deserve director and adapted screenplay nominations for 'Barry Lyndon'?

Who remembers Burgess Meredith's 'The Day of the Locust'?

'Jaws', however, did capture Oscars for Film Editing, Sound and John Williams' score.

It must be added that Lorraine Gary as Brodie's wife Ellen and Murray Hamilton also make significant contributions to the film.

And while they undoubtedly playef key roles in the movie's success, one other element of 'Jaws' that has made it so beloved to film buffs is the sheer difficulty of the shoot.

The making of 'Jaws' is the stuff of Hollywood legend.

It traumatised Spielberg so much, he couldn't make the sequel.

Made in the era before special effects and CGI, the director relied on three pneumatically powered prop sharks - which the crew nicknamed "Bruce" after Spielberg's lawyer.

The problem was they had a tendency to break down during bad weather and corrode, thanks to the saltwater.

Spielberg's insistence that the movie be shot at sea in Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts just for sheet authenticity also took its toll on his crew, who not only suffered seasickness and sunburn but also had to struggle with cameras being soaked, sailing boats straying into the frame and the Orca sinking with the actors on board.

                        

Shaw also occasionally fled to Canada from the set to avoid tax problems and frequently engaged in binge drinking.

Murray Hamilton, who played Mayor Vaughn, also famously got sprayed by a skunk on a drunken night out which he had mistaken for a cat.

Most of these stories, which are documented in Gottleib's 'The Jaws Log', only add to the sense of mystique around 'Jaws'.

But ultimately it is the resourcefulness of Spielberg and his crew in the face of these challenges that is its greatest asset.

Confronted by mechanical difficulties and concerns over whether the audience would actually buy that the shark was real, Spielberg opted for Alfred Hitchcock's approach of teasing the audience before revealing all.

And so we have in the first half of the movie point of view shots for the shark, the glimpses of a dorsal fin in the water and dramatic spurts of blood but no full on reveal of its Great White.

By creating a largely unseen enemy for much of the movie with the help of cinematographer Bill Butler and Verna Fields' clever film editing, Spielberg expertly ratcheted up the suspense and the fear.

And it is this ingenious approach that continues to fascinate future generations to this day.

                                  

When she was nine, my daughter was a big fan of Spielberg's and loved 'ET', 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', 'Jurassic Park' and 'War of the Worlds'. 

However even then, Ellen was fascinated by 'Jaws' and often glimpsed at the cover of the DVD we had in our house.

She stared at it with awe and a little trepidation - having heard about bits of it from me and other relatives.

It became a landmark movie in her mind - a sign of her maturity as a filmgoer that could open up a glorious pathway to other great movies with darker themes.

And when we did sit down to watch it together when she was 10, the film really lived up to expectations.

As she gets older, she has grown to admire Spielberg's craft and guile.

And like many of her generation, she is still entranced.

As long as there is cinema, 'Jaws' will never die.

The fact that it continues to mesmerise audiences decades later shows just how much 'Jaws' redefined Hollywood cinema.

('Jaws' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on December 26, 1975)