Defining Favourites: Jaws (1975)

Steven Spielberg's blockbuster isn't just pivotal to film history, it's a film that understands the heart of America and its best interests.

Photo: Universal Pictures

Welcome to my Defining Favourites, a section dedicated to essays about films that I feel confident in calling favourites in some way or another — akin to Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” reviews. These essays are for paid subscribers, so if you would like to read more beyond the free preview, please consider subscribing.

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb, from the novel by Benchley
Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown
Starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton
Premiere Date: June 20, 1975
Running Time: 124 minutes

It would feel almost redundant to go through the history of Jaws, let alone its legendary status as the prototype for the summer blockbuster. But even though the spectacle of watching Jaws comes from knowing that there’s something that’ll devour anyone who dares to swim the beaches of Amity Island on the Fourth of July, it’s left to our imagination. Steven Spielberg has noted that his approach to making a thriller was lifted from the style of Alfred Hitchcock, feeding the curiosity before the entire package is served. Considering the circumstances in which a young Spielberg had endured while bringing Jaws to life, perhaps it also feels like it’s an emblem of the same pressures he had faced to prove himself as a filmmaker going forth. And as such, it cements Jaws as more than just the perfect blockbuster: it’s the perfect film about America on the whole.

Every minute of Jaws feels brilliant in its design, but also the way in which it’s set up. It doesn’t lie about what it is: it’s a monster movie where there’s a man-eating shark looming in the water looking to prey upon its next victim. The Fourth of July weekend is naturally going to bring in money from tourists, who look to spend their summer vacations on the beaches. Despite the fact that evidence points to the presence of a shark, Amity Island’s mayor, Larry Vaughn, orders that the beaches stay open against the advice of police chief Martin Brody. It’s such an easy problem to avoid at this point, but that stubborn refusal to take an easy solution is a big part of where Jaws has maintained its own reputation over the years. This is just the American capitalist system continuously being fed victims one after another, and regardless of who was targeted by the shark, it doesn’t stop there, either.