Classic Film Kid Revisited: Jaws, 8 Years Later (1975)

On November 6th 2016, I started my grand journey aboard The Geek Show with a review of the all-time classic Jaws. The ‘classic’ part was particularly relevant for me as I used to review films as the Classic Film Kid (those words felt nostalgic just to type), judging whether they earned their reputation. Obviously most of the time they did, but for me it felt exciting as a young person getting into cinema to watch and review all these films. I may not have kept up with a consistent schedule, but I was a teenager so shut up and let me off.

Why am I revisiting this? Well, eight years is a bit of a weird anniversary to celebrate but when I consider that back then I was 11 and had just started secondary school, but now I’m in my second year of university and nearly 20, I realise just how much my view of cinema has changed and how much I’ve improved as a writer. Another unfortunate thing that inspired me to do it is this: last time the review was released at a similar time to the 2016 U.S election, and this is coming shortly after one (which ended with the same result). Now that coincidence has been highlighted, let’s completely ignore the real world and go back to the year 1975, before it was a band with an obnoxious lead singer.

This is something I didn’t touch upon much in my initial review, but it’s hard for me to really understand how influential Jaws was to the concept of a ‘blockbuster’ since blockbusters are now so commonplace. Strangely, it was a recent experience that put this into perspective for me. 

I’ve often found myself going to the cinema, either by myself or with my family, on a weekend morning when it’s reasonably quiet. I was surprised when I went to see Wicked that, at just quarter past nine on a Sunday morning, there was a queue outside the screen to get in. God knows what a queue would have looked like on the Friday night, but regardless this was my first experience of what a ‘blockbuster’ movie looked like back in the day. There’s many pictures of people queuing round the block to get in and see Jaws, and same with other major blockbusters such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones. That’s a feeling that’s hard to replicate now (unless of course you’ve adapted a Broadway musical and put Ariana Grande in a starring role). 

Even more unusual for a blockbuster now, Jaws is surprisingly small-scale. Marvel films can cross the entire planet and in some cases the entire cosmos, and many others are set in fantastical fictional environments. Jaws, however, keeps all the action contained to this one beach town, and a big but manageable cast. I suppose you could say that at its core the story is a fairly simple tale – the heroes are in pursuit of a villain that’s been doing some bad stuff. However, with the villain being a shark and not any form of freakish monster helps ground the film in reality and makes the stakes feel more real. 

Speaking of real, it also helps that Jaws has some of the best main characters ever written for a major blockbuster. Chief Martin Brody, Matt Hooper and Quint aren’t perfect human beings but, crucially, they all feel like actual human beings. I love a lot of the Marvel films, but I know that Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff and others are larger-than-life comic book characters and therefore it’s really hard to imagine them as real people, whereas Jaws is fantastic at the little details that really brings its characters to life. 

Within just a few short scenes, we’ve established that Brody is a fish out of water, scared for his family’s safety, and struggling to be a voice of authority for the new community. Many blockbusters now often stop the action to have the conversations, or play up the dramatic music to show the audience that this is now a serious bit, but the screenplay here is so effortless in communicating everything we need to know about these characters, and so are the performances. 

Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw are all fantastic, well-respected actors (even if some of my respect for Dreyfuss has waned a bit recently), and they lend these characters so much personality and added depth. Everyone goes on about Scheider as the lead, and the fantastic touches that Shaw brings to the character of Quint, but I’ve got to applaud Dreyfuss for his often-overlooked performance as Hooper. In many ways he’s the anchor of the group, trying to tame the outrageous personality of Quint and the emotions of Brody, and the scenes with all three of them together are magic.

I’m fairly sure that this is the first time I’ve watched the film since initially reviewing it eight years ago which is a mad thing to think about, but since I’ve had nearly ten years to separate myself from that first watch, it did feel like I was watching it again for the first time. The main thing that struck me this time round is just how much of the film takes place on the small boat itself. It’s basically the entire second half, and it’s one of the finest stretches of cinema I’ve ever seen. This is where you can see the young and hungry Spielberg determined to put his stamp on things – the camera feels like its own character, and every shot feels rich and packed with detail. 

People point to the iconic shots such as the push-pull on the beach (Editor: ‘Dolly Zoom’ is its technical name), and the moment where ‘Bruce’ just shows up when Brody isn’t looking, but for me it’s the even smaller moments – the way he frames the conversation on the boat, the way we’re always following certain characters. And, of course, since this is Spielberg before the backlash to Temple of Doom, his direction gets visceral here. When the shark starts attacking Quint, he doesn’t cut away and we see the shark biting down on him as blood begins pouring out his mouth. You just love it when a director doesn’t give a shit about scarring his audience, don’t you?

The final reason why I wanted to tackle this again is that next year, 2025, will be its 50th anniversary. That’s half a century of the cinema landscape having Jaws in it, half a century of the shape of blockbusters being influenced by this one film, whether intentional or not. For as much as it may have left its legacy, it also still ranks a cut above its fifty years’ worth of competition. No blockbusters nowadays pride themselves on the details as much as Jaws does, and no-one really directs them with as much verve and flair as Spielberg did here. You’d think that there’d be many films since that would’ve bettered what this did, but not really. Jaws still reigns supreme and, eight years since starting this wonderful journey on The Geek Show, my opinion has not changed one bit. Yes, this is a classic.

Here’s to the next eight years of reviews, which of course knowing me will include another bloody retrospective on Coraline and more inane ramblings on Doctor Who. What can I say? I’ve found my niche.

Alex’s Archive (inc. all of his Classic Film Kid articles): Jaws (1975)