The birth of the blockbuster

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, August 29th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the film that ruined the ocean for 11-year-old Nick.

You know, some movies fade with time. Others do not. They still give you chills half a century later.

WORLD movie reviewer Max Belz takes us back to the summer of 1975.

MAX BELZ: Fifty summers ago Steven Spielberg’s Jaws hit theaters. Movie historians now regard it as the first summer blockbuster: It was suspenseful, action-packed, and audiences could watch it over and over.

Let me start by saying that this is a horror movie, not appropriate for young children. There are some gory scenes and bad language. In 1975 it was rated PG, but today it would likely get an R rating. With that caution stated, why does it merit recognition?

Simply, Jaws made Steven Spielberg a household name.

In this story, the sleepy New England town of Amity relies on summertime tourism to boost its economy. But a shark starts attacking swimmers, specifically young people.

As the shark claims more lives, the townspeople turn on the police chief Martin Brody, played by Roy Scheider, who represents the red-blooded, small-town American.

MRS. KINTER: You knew it was dangerous, but you let people go swimming anyway. You knew all those things.

A kind of madness descends on this quaint town. To solve the problem, Brody teams up with marine biologist Matt Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss at his high-strung best.

HOOPER: When I was 12 years old my father got me this boat and I went fishing off of Cape Cod and I hooked a scup and as I was reeling it in I hooked a four and a half foot baby thresher shark who proceeded to eat my boat. ...  Ever since then, I have been studying sharks and that’s why I know that I’m gonna go to the institute tomorrow and tell them that you still have a shark problem here.

Brody and Hopper are at loggerheads with the mayor about what to do, so they join a wizened fisherman named Quint to track and kill the awful fish.

HOOPER: That’s it, good-bye. I’m not going to waste my time arguing with the man who’s lining up to be hot lunch.

One of the movie’s striking features is Spielberg’s skill with the camera. It absorbs action and gesture, even in sequences that would be easy to miss.

In an early scene, the city council corners the police chief on a ferry to pressure him into not closing the beaches, despite the terror of the ravenous shark.

VAUGHN: I'm only trying to say that Amity is a summer town. We need summer dollars. If the people can't swim here they'll be glad to swim at the beaches of Cape Cod, the Hamptons, Long Island.

The camera holds on the conversation while the horizon slides around behind the ferry. Rather than having the characters move, the background moves, providing a mesmerizing visual effect.

Spielberg, like other great filmmakers, was inspired by John Ford. Ford told Spielberg that the young man would succeed if he placed the horizon near the top or the bottom of the camera frame rather than right in the middle. Spielberg’s visual instincts to place individuals against the blue sky or the chop of the water heighten the action in Jaws.

MARTIN: You’re going to need a bigger boat.

The second half of the movie is shot with high drama on the open seas. This part of the story recalls Moby-Dick: the half-crazy sea captain sacrificing everything to catch a menacing sea creature. The maniacal search for a fish brings The Old Man and the Sea to mind as well.

ELLEN: Martin, it’s his birthday tomorrow.

MARTIN: I don’t want him on the ocean.

ELLEN: He’s not on the ocean, he’s in a boat. He’s not going to go in the water. I don’t think he’ll ever go in the water again after what happened yesterday.

You’d think that the confines of a small boat in a big ocean would be visually limiting, but Spielberg’s camera soaks up the action above and below the water line, finding new angles as the characters crawl around their boat in a panic.

QUINT: You know the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye.

One shot before the final encounter with the shark shows Quint on the prow of the boat with only a yellow buoy streaking along the surface of the blue water.

Just before the movie’s climax, Spielberg works in a moving speech. Quint reveals that he was among the few men to survive the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, leaving most of its sailors to die from the elements or to be eaten by sharks.

QUINT: Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know, you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail.

Spielberg’s camera packs in drama and action. The composition of the scenes and the movement of characters in relationship to their environment keep the story in perpetual motion. Here’s fellow movie director Francis Ford Coppola on Spielberg:

COPPOLA: Steven always was a creature of the studio and his thinking and his methodology went that direction and he became a master of it. He was very fortunate that the kind of movie he really had a sense for was also the kind of movie the audience had a sense for.

Spielberg went on to become one of the greatest filmmakers of all time with the Indiana Jones movies and Jurassic Park. But he’s also created moving historical epics like Schindler’s List. His penchant for emotionally moving, action-filled movies struck a chord with audiences in 1975, and his camera in Jaws still keeps viewers on the edge of their seats.

I’m Max Belz.

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