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Jaws came out on June 20, 1975, and more than half a century later it still makes people think twice about going in the water. It's worth looking at why a movie whose shark barely worked became one of the most influential films ever made.
The basics
Steven Spielberg, still in his 20s, directed Jaws from Peter Benchley's 1974 bestseller. Roy Scheider plays Martin Brody, police chief of Amity Island, a beach town that lives on summer tourists. Richard Dreyfuss plays oceanographer Matt Hooper, and Robert Shaw plays Quint, the shark hunter. The production shot on Martha's Vineyard, which stood in for Amity.
The shark that wouldn't work
The mechanical shark, nicknamed Bruce by the crew, kept breaking down once it hit salt water. With the movie's biggest effect out of commission, Spielberg leaned on what the audience couldn't see: yellow barrels tracking the shark, underwater shots from its point of view, and long stretches of dread. The result is scarier than a shark on screen every few minutes would have been.
Two notes
John Williams' score, built around a simple two-note pattern, tells you the shark is coming before you see anything. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Score. Jaws also won Oscars for film editing and sound, and it was nominated for Best Picture.
It set the template for the summer blockbuster
Universal opened Jaws in hundreds of theaters at once and backed it with national TV ads, which was unusual at the time. It became the highest-grossing movie ever until Star Wars passed it in 1977, and the big-summer-release playbook it helped establish is still how studios work today.
The people are the point
The shark gets the poster, but the movie works because of the three men on the boat. Quint's quiet monologue about surviving the sinking of the USS Indianapolis is one of the most famous scenes in the film, and there's no shark in it at all. And the line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" is widely reported to have been improvised by Scheider.
Why it still lands
Underneath the shark, Jaws is about a town that would rather stay open for business than admit there's a problem. Mayor Larry Vaughn keeps the beaches open for the Fourth of July, and people get hurt. That part never seems to go out of date.