'JAWS', THE BEGINNING OF SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to watch Jaws, the American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg.

The Grandma loves this film and this director, and she remembers when she assisted to the premiere on a day like today in 1975.

Jaws is a 1975 American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on Peter Benchley's 1974 novel of the same name.

In the film, a man-eating great white shark attacks beach goers at a summer resort town, prompting police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) to hunt it with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a professional shark hunter (Robert Shaw). Murray Hamilton plays the mayor, and Lorraine Gary portrays Brody's wife. The screenplay is credited to Benchley, who wrote the first drafts, and actor-writer Carl Gottlieb, who rewrote the script during principal photography.

Shot mostly on location on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, Jaws was the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, and resultantly had a troubled production, going over budget and past schedule.

As the art department's mechanical sharks often malfunctioned, Spielberg decided mostly to suggest the shark's presence, employing an ominous and minimalist theme created by composer John Williams to indicate its impending appearances.

Spielberg and others have compared this suggestive approach to that of director Alfred Hitchcock. Universal Pictures gave the film what was then an exceptionally wide release for a major studio picture, on over 450 screens, accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign with a heavy emphasis on television spots and tie-in merchandise.

Jaws was the prototypical summer blockbuster, regarded as a watershed moment in motion picture history, and it won several awards for its music and editing. It was the highest-grossing film until the release of Star Wars in 1977. Both films were pivotal in establishing the modern Hollywood business model, which pursues high box-office returns from action and adventure films with simple high-concept premises, released during the summer in thousands of theatres and advertised heavily.

More information: Screen Rant

Jaws was followed by three sequels (without the involvement of Spielberg or Benchley) and many imitative thrillers.

In 2001, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

Principal photography began May 2, 1974, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, selected after consideration was given to eastern Long Island. Brown explained later that the production needed a vacation area that was lower middle class enough so that an appearance of a shark would destroy the tourist business.

Martha's Vineyard was also chosen because the surrounding ocean had a sandy bottom that never dropped below 11 m for 19 km out from shore, which allowed the mechanical sharks to operate while also beyond sight of land.

As Spielberg wanted to film the aquatic sequences relatively close-up to resemble what people see while swimming, cinematographer Bill Butler devised new equipment to facilitate marine and underwater shooting, including a rig to keep the camera stable regardless of tide and a sealed submersible camera box.

Spielberg asked the art department to avoid red in both scenery and wardrobe, so that the blood from the attacks would be the only red element and cause a bigger shock.

John Williams composed the film's score, which earned him an Academy Award and was later ranked the sixth-greatest score by the American Film Institute. The main shark theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes -variously identified as E and F or F and F sharp- became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger.

Williams described the theme as grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable. The piece was performed by tuba player Tommy Johnson. When asked by Johnson why the melody was written in such a high register and not played by the more appropriate French horn, Williams responded that he wanted it to sound a little more threatening.

When Williams first demonstrated his idea to Spielberg, playing just the two notes on a piano, Spielberg was said to have laughed, thinking that it was a joke. As Williams saw similarities between Jaws and pirate movies, at other points in the score he evoked pirate music, which he called primal, but fun and entertaining. Calling for rapid, percussive string playing, the score contains echoes of La mer by Claude Debussy as well as Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

More information: Roger Ebert

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is the most notable artistic antecedent to Jaws. The character of Quint strongly resembles Captain Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequod who devotes his life to hunting a sperm whale.

Quint's monologue reveals a similar obsession with sharks; even his boat, the Orca, is named after the only natural enemy of the white shark. In the novel and original screenplay, Quint dies after being dragged under the ocean by a harpoon tied to his leg, similar to the death of Ahab in Melville's novel.

A direct reference to these similarities may be found in Spielberg's draft of the screenplay, which introduces Quint watching the film version of Moby-Dick; his continuous laughter prompts other audience members to get up and leave the theatre.

However, the scene from Moby-Dick could not be licensed from the film's star, Gregory Peck, its copyright holder. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb also drew comparisons to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea: Jaws is... a titanic struggle, like Melville or Hemingway.

The underwater scenes shot from the shark's point of view have been compared with passages in two 1950s horror films, Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Monster That Challenged the World.

Gottlieb named two science fiction productions from the same era as influences on how the shark was depicted, or not: The Thing from Another World, which Gottlieb described as a great horror film where you only see the monster in the last reel; and It Came From Outer Space, where the suspense was built up because the creature was always off-camera.

Jaws opened in 409 theatres with a record $7 million weekend and grossed a record $21,116,354 in its first 10 days, recouping its production costs. It grossed $100 million in its first 59 days from 954 play dates.

In just 78 days, it overtook The Godfather as the highest-grossing film at the North American box office, sailing past that picture's earnings of $86 million and became the first film to earn $100 million in US theatrical rentals.

Its initial release ultimately brought in $123.1 million in rentals. Theatrical re-releases in 1976 and Summer 1979 brought its total rentals to $133.4 million.

Jaws received mostly positive reviews upon release.

Jaws won three Academy Awards, those being for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound (Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery, and John Carter). It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Spielberg greatly resented the fact that he was not nominated for Best Director. Along with the Oscar, John Williams's score won the Grammy Award, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, and the Golden Globe Award.

To her Academy Award, Verna Fields added the American Cinema Editors' Eddie Award for Best Edited Feature Film. Jaws was chosen Favorite Movie at the People's Choice Awards.

More information: Explore Entertainment

'Jaws' was the first A-list picture that was released
like an exploitation picture.
They made a lot of money with that picture
because they could save a lot of money on advertising.
Instead of having a full-page ad in 'The New York Times'
for one theater, they had it for 100 theaters.

Peter Bogdanovich