Thursday, April 29, 2010

Jaws: On the Beach

Here's a pretty good article that gives a b it of a history of Jaws, and also details some of the lasting effects it's had on the American movie industry. Give it a read and check back in with me at the end.

SUMMER FILMS: ON THE BEACH;
The Movie That Created the 'Summer Movie'

By TERRENCE RAFFERTY (NYT)
Copyright New York Times Company Apr 30, 2000

Twenty-five years ago, Steven Spielberg's ''Jaws'' created the Summer Movie as we know it: the action-heavy ''thrill ride'' sort of picture, aimed at sensation-hungry younger audiences, which moves into theaters around Memorial Day and remains there, partying hard, until the school year starts up again in September. ''Jaws'' opened on June 20, 1975, and its phenomenal popularity -- it was the first movie to relieve American audiences of more than $100 million of their hard-earned money -- helped turn Hollywood into what is now largely a summer-business town, sort of like Amity, the New England beach resort where the film's dire events take place. Watching the picture today, you might interpret it as a kind of allegory, in which the business community of Amity, refusing to close the beaches after a couple of fatal shark attacks, eerily embodies the ethics and aesthetics of the entertainment industry. The distributors and exhibitors do not shut down the multiplex even when they know that something lethal -- a ''Speed 2,'' a ''Godzilla,'' a ''Wild, Wild West'' -- lurks within.

This is not to say (as some do) that ''Jaws'' is responsible for the ''blockbuster mentality'' that has held sway over the major studios for the past couple of decades. When did Hollywood not try for blockbusters? You can pin this rap on any enormously lucrative picture you happen not to like; just from the decade preceding ''Jaws,'' suspects include ''The Exorcist,'' ''The French Connection,'' ''Love Story'' and ''The Sound of Music.'' ''The Godfather'' has the alibi of obvious greatness; even if it were the culprit, not a court in the world would convict it. The worst you can say about ''Jaws,'' I think, is that its success suggested, to the beady-eyed studio marketers, a link between the kind of movie it so spectacularly was and the time of year when it was released.

When studio executives first saw ''Jaws,'' they must have reacted like those old cartoon characters whose eyes would pop open and turn into dollar signs. The movie proposed a solution to a problem that had been plaguing the suits since the late 60's -- how to tap into the big ''youth'' market, but reliably. The studios didn't quite understand the appeal of pictures like ''The Graduate,'' ''Bonnie and Clyde,'' ''Easy Rider'' and ''M*A*S*H'' and certainly couldn't replicate it. (For that matter, they couldn't even figure out how to clone ''Love Story.'') But ''Jaws'' was, on the face of it, entertainment of a type the studios knew how to produce. At that time, action pictures were mostly being marketed to older audiences, but ''Jaws'' showed Hollywood it could sell action to kids too, with a few adjustments -- a faster pace, a hipper kind of humor, a stronger sense of horror and no Charlton Heston. (Mr. Heston had in fact wanted to play the police chief in ''Jaws,'' but Mr. Spielberg wisely rejected him in favor of Roy Scheider.) And why not release that type of movie in the summertime, when -- for the middle-class young, at least -- the livin' is easy?

The discovery of the action-youth-summer nexus is a stirring myth for marketing departments, a Grail legend for M.B.A.'s. Ordinary moviegoers, however -- and especially those over 25 -- tend to view this achievement as rather a mixed blessing. What if, some pleasant evening in July, you want to go to the movies, but just don't feel like a blow-you-through-the-back-wall-of-the-theater experience? You're out of luck, and that could make you a tad resentful toward ''Jaws'' and its spawn. But that feeling should be resisted, because ''Jaws,'' like ''The Godfather,'' is a great film. And it, too, deserves immunity from prosecution for the crimes of present-day Hollywood.

In order to grant ''Jaws'' the coveted ''Godfather'' exemption, though, it may be necessary for film historians and the higher-minded segment of the film audience to overcome a few prejudices about genre. ''Jaws'' is, after all, fundamentally a horror movie. There's a rugged, nautical-adventure component to the second half of the picture, in which the three main characters -- Police Chief Brody, an icthyologist named Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and the salty old shark-hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) -- roam the coastal waters in search of the giant homicidal fish. But the movie has a lot more in common with ''Dracula'' than with ''Moby-Dick.'' This great white shark is no Great White Whale, gorging on metaphor; it's a monster, pure and simple, and its sole purpose is to generate fear.

That's the essence of the horror genre -- in fact, the only way of defining it that connects supernatural thrillers about ghosts and vampires with sci-fi monster movies (''The Thing,'' the ''Alien'' series), and also with slasher and serial-killer sagas (''Halloween,'' ''The Silence of the Lambs'') that don't require the viewer to believe in occult forces, life after death, the Devil, or extraterrestrial organisms. The shark of ''Jaws,'' as conceived by Peter Benchley, the author of the best-selling 1973 novel, is a natural predator exaggerated just enough to turn it into an acceptable horror-story nemesis: it's described as a ''rogue,'' with atypical feeding patterns that almost suggest a purpose, a malevolent will; and it's larger than normal, making it, of course, that much harder to kill. Those are the characteristics requisite to a monster: a whiff of evil and an aura of invincibility.

And Mr. Spielberg, who had successfully attributed those very qualities to, of all things, a big truck in the television movie ''Duel'' (1971), knew even more than Mr. Benchley did about the mechanics of producing fear. One of the reasons the film is so much better than the book is that Mr. Spielberg is more single-minded in his dedication to scaring us silly; he eliminated the novel's distracting subplots, and his editing rhythm is so unsettling that the audience never gets the chance to relax, even during apparent lulls and scenes of comic relief. We're always aware of something awful under the placid surface.

How much an individual viewer actually enjoys that unremitting tension is, I suppose, a matter of temperament. What makes a horror movie more disturbing than other kinds of suspense thrillers and action movies -- police dramas, say, or the international intrigue Tom Clancy serves up -- is that the anxiety it generates is magnified by a sense of helplessness: you're up against a force that can't be mastered by reason. Many adults, especially those of the well-educated, professionally accomplished variety, don't like that feeling one bit and may complain about having been manipulated by a genuinely scary movie like ''Jaws.'' (If there's manipulating to be done, they're going to be the ones to do it.) Those of us who don't feel quite so masterly are a good deal more comfortable with the horror experience. Teenagers get it in a big way.

Two years after ''Jaws'' opened, Mr. Spielberg himself sounded a little sheepish about what he'd done, almost apologetic about the film's effectiveness. ''I have very mixed feelings about my work on that picture,'' he said. ''I saw it again and realized it was the simplest movie I had ever seen in my life. It was just the essential moving, working parts of suspense and terror.'' He was unfair to himself. Of the thousands of suspense-and-terror machines constructed for the movies in the medium's first century, only a few have made their ''moving, working parts'' function so smoothly. (Even though the movie's mechanical shark, famously, didn't work very well at all.) But Mr. Spielberg didn't want to be known as, in his words, ''a shark-and-truck director,'' perhaps in part because, like all young virtuosos -- he was 28 when ''Jaws'' opened -- he had a tendency to get bored with his own facility, to undervalue the skills that other artists would sell their souls for.

And he probably suspected, too, that as a director of horror movies he would never be taken entirely seriously as a filmmaker and might even wind up looking faintly disreputable. (The career of his friend Brian De Palma would, over the next 10 years, provide confirmation of that suspicion.) Mr. Spielberg could have used some of the magisterial confidence of Alfred Hitchcock, who was always inordinately proud of ''Psycho'' -- the ''Jaws'' of 1960 -- precisely because it was the film in which he exercised the most absolute control over viewers' responses. The master of suspense wasn't apologetic about creating fear, because it's a potent emotion, and he was fortunate (or, if you will, cynical) enough to believe that for a filmmaker no emotion was better than any other.

Hitchcock may not have been right about that. The sheer terror of ''Psycho'' is less complex, and less rewarding for the audience, than the metaphysical dread that informs ''Vertigo.'' And fear, it should be said, is potentially more dangerous than many other emotions: wielded by demagogues and propagandists, it can be hugely destructive. But it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't have to be moronically simple, either. ''Jaws'' is the proof.

Although Mr. Spielberg's technical prowess is ideally suited to the horror genre, his temperament really isn't. He brings a rather sunny outlook to extremely dark material, a contrast that weirdly enhances the paradox at the center of Mr. Benchley's story: the juxtaposition of summertime fun and sudden, violent death. (In ''Jaws,'' a day at the beach isn't exactly a day at the beach.) Mr. Spielberg doesn't merely juxtapose those elements but seems rather to unite them; they meet, somehow, at the horizon.

What struck me as I watched ''Jaws'' again recently (there's a good letterboxed video but no DVD yet) is how much more humor and beauty Mr. Spielberg brings to it than it really needs to be an effective genre piece. The interplay of the three men in the boat is often hilarious (think, for example, of the improvised-looking scene in which they drunkenly compare scars), and even the most shocking bits of carnage are so elegantly conceived that they have a sort of perverse wit. For all the relentless, terrifying momentum ''Jaws'' builds up, it's an unusually companionable horror picture: it doesn't oppress viewers with claustrophobic atmosphere or try to wow them with special effects. As far as I can tell, there isn't a single process shot in the movie. The ocean and the clear sky are allowed to be themselves, and so are the three sensibly apprehensive men who move through this gorgeous setting in search of the beast. ''Jaws'' makes fear look natural -- which of course, it is. In this picture, we understand terror so well we can even laugh at it.

I don't mean to denigrate ''Jaws'' by making it sound profound. This is not the sort of picture that wants the audience to think too hard. It's a visceral-experience movie, and its distinction, I believe, is that it's truer to the experience of physical fear than any other horror movie, before or since. I also wouldn't want to claim that the film's influence hasn't been a little pernicious. We'd all give a lot, I'm sure, to have been spared the overbearing action-and-horror fests of the past 25 summers (including, prominently, Mr. Spielberg's own ''Jaws'' knockoff ''Jurassic Park''). But it's time to let ''Jaws'' off the hook. Like the great white, it is what it is, and does what it does with extraordinary efficiency and power. And so what if most of its descendants have been terrible? If every summer movie were as good as ''Jaws,'' none of us would ever get to the beach.


Mr. Cowlin here again. Here's my question: Three decades after Jaws was first released, do you think the legacy it has left has made the world of entertainment a better place, or not? (Please answer in a thoughtful, thorough answer. Please refer to the article to support your claims. Please also note that this entry will be worth 10 points instead of the usual 5, so give yourself some time to really think about this one.)

7 comments:

  1. I think that the legacy of Jaws has made the would of entertainment a better place. One thing that made Jaws stand out is that the shark was not in every scene in the movie. He probably wasn't even in half of the movie. This gave the audience a chance to focus on the characters and the storyline rather than the monster popping up everywhere. Since then, many more movies have been made like that. Even in another Steven Speilberg film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the actual aliens are barely in the movie at all. If they were in many of the scenes it would take away from character and plot development. It also creates more suspense, because the monsters are not in every scene the audience has to anticipate when the monster is actually going to appear in the movie. Also, Something that I don't agree about the article is that the author said. "What if, some pleasant evening in July, you want to go to the movies, but just don't feel like a blow-you-through-the-back-wall-of-the-theater experience?" I think that the movie Jaws influenced future summer blockbusters, but I don't think it ruined summer movies for people who don't want to see a big-budget thriller movie. There are still plenty of relaxing movies that play during the summer for those who don't want to see movies like Jaws. I think now there is more of a variety of movies to see during the summer. There are now movies for everyone to see.

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  2. Jaws definitely left a huge legacy on the film industry, and it was a good one. It clearly left a mark on the industry though, making hollywood a summer town, as stated in the article, but that statement only partially applies. i feel that while yes Jaws did make Hollywood a summer town in some ways, in other ways it didn't. what Jaws really did was split hollywood into two big seasons; the HUGE BUDGET action packed, fire filled, explosion heavy films, and academy award winning cinematic masterpieces. while jaws doesn't fit that as it won an academy award, it applies to alot of post jaws movies. The summer is filled with blockbuster hits. often these are all action, oftentimes lacking plot line, but they make millions cause they look AWESOME. then come fall and winter, hollywood shifts into Academy award mode. around thanksgiving and christmas you begin to see the brilliantly produced movies filled with incredible plots and flawless cinema precision and acting.So all in all, i think that jaws legacy has definitely left a positive legacy on Hollywood as it has made a calendar full of variety and themes to fit the seasons of the real world with the experience in theaters.

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  3. I think the film "Jaws" had both a negative and postive impact in the film industry. Obviously, Jaws set the standard for future films. Instead of trying to overload as much mindless action and fear into adventure/horror films, JAWS showed directors that a film could be captivating without huge action and budgets. Being the father of summer movies, JAWS also made summer time an exciting time for teenagers to go watch movies. JAWS was simple, clean, yet captivating. The characters were obvious, and the film focused more on the plot than the effects. With these aspects JAWS has influenced other directors and films, shifting the focus from huge explosions to interesting plots and characters.

    On the other hand, JAWS has also done the film world a bit of disservice. Although it has made summer time an especially open oppurtunity for big budget blockbusters, these blockbusters have not always been of good quality. In addition, as the article mentioned, the film portrayed death as too normal, almost laughable. Not much emotion was expressed from Brody at the death of Quint. Perhaps in this way, death becomes an almost natural part of every action movie. In addition, in hopes of making a big box office splash, JAWS sequels have come out which have become progressively worse.

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  4. Tanya MarinovskaMay 3, 2010 at 5:54 PM

    Even after three decades since its first release, I think that "Jaws" has had a relatively positive influence on the world of entertainment. In the movie review, Terrence Rafferty said, "...it doesn't oppress viewers with claustrophobic atmosphere or try to wow them with special effects." What he is trying to say is that even without all of the high budgeting and amazing special effects, it still received an incredible reaction from moviegoers. "Jaws" taught many movie directors that a simple movie with a straight forward storyline, no huge twists and tricks, can sometimes be a lot better and more interesting than a movie that has almost too much action and too dramatic of a storyline. "Jaws" also has influenced the entertainment world by creating a horror film, but to the point where it's not overdoing the horror, there is a very believable reality between the horror in the film and the other events. For example, in the review, Terrence says, "...the juxtaposition of summertime fun and sudden, violent death." Somehow Spielberg was able to take all of the horror elements and put them into a storyline that could be very realistic. Although many movies as of now do not follow much of the characteristics of the movie "Jaws," this 1975 movie has and will stand as a lasting legacy of what a simple, yet amazing, and successful movie should look like.

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  5. After Jaws was released, it changed the film industry forever. For showing such success, Jaws changed summer blockbusters forever. As a result of Jaws, summer blockbusters are not a joke anymore, but a hit. New must-see, mostly action or horror, movies are often released in the summer. Jaws had and still has lots of influence over other movies. 30 years later, critics and viewers still agree Jaws is worth watching. The credit of Jaws and its success goes to the brilliant director, Steven Spielberg. Spieldberg created this movie in such a way, that you buy into every part of it. What’s so interesting is that the main character, the shark, was barely ever shown in the movie. Yet Spieldberg created the shark to be so scary and so realistic viewers were scared for weeks. Spieldberg’s brilliant idea of rarely showing the shark, gave the shark more power and a scarier feel. He directed the movie so well that no matter what was going on, viewers bought into the story. Spieldberg’s created the movie not with amazing special effects but with simple details that made everything look realistic. Terrence Raffert of the New York Times commented on the movie saying, ““Jaws” makes fear look natural”.

    “Jaws” was so brilliant and not flawed, sequels and 'try to be Jaws' cannot compare. Sequels and remakes just do not cut it. They try to re-do the movie as well as Spieldberg did, but it has proven is impossible.

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  6. Jaw most definitely left an influence on the film world, both negative and positive. Jaws changed the summer movie world. Hits are now shown in the summer rather than the winter. Summer movies used to be a cheesy and a joke, but now are often hits and blockbusters. Summer movies are now the actions movie that one cannot wait to see. Rafferty responds to the movie saying, “''Jaws'' opened on June 20, 1975, and its phenomenal popularity -- it was the first movie to relieve American audiences of more than $100 million of their hard-earned money -- helped turn Hollywood into what is now largely a summer-business town, sort of like Amity, the New England beach resort where the film's dire events take place.” Steven Spielberg’s directing also left a positive influence on the film industry. His smart decisions and choices made the movie not a cartoon, but realistic and a respectable movie. “When studio executives first saw ''Jaws,'' they must have reacted like those old cartoon characters whose eyes would pop open and turn into dollar signs,” says Rafferty.

    However, Jaws also left a negative influence on the world. The movie often joked and made the audience laugh at the man-eating shark and its killing spree. The men and the town often take the shark as a joke and something to laugh at. For example, the drunken men compare their scars in the boat. Spielberg puts jokes into the movie, which makes the movie seem like its stereo-typical ‘cartoon’.

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  7. Jaws most definitely left a legacy in the film industry, there is no doubt about it. After being released in the summer and becoming one of the biggest hits of all time, more and more films tried to live make "summer hits" as well. Though none could match up to that of Jaws. Jaws began the cycle of certain types of films being release at certain times of the year. For example, as I perviousy stated, summer was and still is the time to come out with the big Blockbuster action films. Jaws was so brilliantly done and put together that many of the attempted summer "blockbuster hits" can not match up. So, with that being said, I suppose you could argue that because of Jaws making other films look bad, that this is a negative effect of the Jaws legacy. However, if a great piece of work like Jaws was never created, who knows where the film industry would be today. Would we have those that aspire to create something powerful and thrilling and something more than your average medeokre film? Jaws gave vision to the film industry. Gave those working in the industry something to look up to. Something to work towards. This would be the positive effect of the Jaws legacy. There needs to be a leader in a movement. Jaws is the leader for many aspiring "blockbuster hits".

    (Side note: I apologize for the lateness of this post.)

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