Silver Screen Standards: Fifty Years of Jaws (1975)

Silver Screen Standards: Fifty Years of Jaws (1975)

Some people watch fireworks every year on the Fourth of July, but I watch Jaws (1975). Steven Spielberg’s iconic adaptation of the novel by Peter Benchley has long been a favorite of mine, so much so that I wrote a model essay about the use of music in Jaws for my students back in 1995, when I was a teaching assistant just starting my PhD program in English Literature. My love for the film hasn’t dimmed over the decades, and 2025 is an especially good time to revisit Jaws as it celebrates fifty years since its original theatrical release. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for the movie, I know, especially with Jaws sometimes taking the blame for the endless onslaught of empty-headed summer hits we endure today, but despite its box office success the original summer blockbuster is no soulless cash grab. Jaws is, in fact, a cinematic masterpiece, a true classic where every shot, note, and character work in service to a story that functions as modern mythology.

Roy Scheider stars as Amity Island’s Police Chief Martin Brody, a newcomer in the small seaside community along with his wife, Ellen (Lorraine Gary), and their two young sons. A loving father and conscientious safety officer, Brody tries to take action as soon as the shark’s first victim is discovered, but the town’s leaders value their summer profits more than public welfare, and they insist that the beaches remain open for the Fourth of July weekend. More gruesome deaths follow, and Brody is eventually able to bring in scientific expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and hire local shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw). The three men venture out on Quint’s boat, the Orca, to hunt down the massive great white, whose strength and ferocity become apparent as it attempts to destroy the men and their vessel.

One element that sets Jaws above modern blockbusters is its commitment to character. Each of our three main characters is both a very specific individual and also an archetype representing one stage in a man’s life. Hooper, with the blond curls and short stature of a young Richard Dreyfuss, is barely out of boyhood in spite of his scientific knowledge, and he possesses all the enthusiasm and energy of youth. Brody embodies the traits of the father, and we see his paternal devotion in multiple scenes with his sons, not only in moments of peril but also at home. Although Robert Shaw was only five years older than Scheider, and not yet fifty when he made the film, his character, Quint, still fills the role of the grizzled elder, a man who has seen much and been scarred (literally and figuratively) by his experiences. Youth and age inevitably clash, with Hooper and Quint constantly in conflict until their scar contest reveals Quint’s history as a survivor of the USS Indianapolis. Each man brings his own values and worldview to the mission: Hooper wants knowledge, Brody wants safety, and Quint wants revenge. Together they form a mythic trinity – not exactly Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, perhaps, but something like it, a masculine version of the maiden/mother/crone figures so familiar in legends and literature.

Jaws also succeeds in giving us memorable antagonists with their own symbolic resonance. We have the titular shark, of course, a sublime creature in the Romantic sense, inspiring terror and awe in all who see it. The movie unfortunately made sharks widely hated by a fearful public, but the great white of the film is no more representative of real sharks than Hannibal Lecter is of normal human beings. The killer shark is Moby Dick to Quint’s Ahab. It is death and fate incarnate, the ultimate embodiment of “Nature red in tooth and claw.” The title of the film reduces the beast to its most basic element – the insatiable, all-devouring jaws of death. The shark is a monster, to be sure, but so is Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), and the banal evil of the mayor is really the more frightening of the two because people like him exist everywhere. The mayor and his fellow town leaders deny, deflect, and defend to protect their own financial interests in spite of the danger the shark poses to both locals and tourists. They try to cover up the deaths of the first victims, they prevent Brody from closing the beaches, and the mayor even pushes one of his cronies to take his whole family into the water. Vaughn’s disregard for innocent lives in the pursuit of profit makes him the ultimate capitalist and politician. We long to see him be eaten by the shark, but of course Vaughn never goes into the water himself, and he retains his power to undermine public safety again in the sequel, Jaws 2 (1978).

As I mentioned earlier, the music of Jaws has always been one of my favorite elements of the film. The cinematography, locations, editing, and sound all contribute to the movie’s power, but if you mention Jaws to almost anyone, you’re likely to get a rendition of that iconic, menacing theme music. The shark’s theme has become a popular musical symbol for impending doom, and it, along with the rest of his brilliant work for the picture, earned John Williams an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Grammy Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe. Unfortunately, the film’s characters can’t hear the ominous notes that warn the audience of the shark’s approach, but they have their own diegetic music to communicate their perspectives. The most significant diegetic music in the film is Quint’s repeated use of the “Yankee Whalerman” variant of a traditional sea shanty called “Spanish Ladies.” Quint sings the tune as his own prediction of death and disaster, especially where Hooper is concerned, which is why it matters when Hooper gets Quint to give up the dirge in favor of the more cheerful and companionable drinking song, “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” When the three men share the song, they bond over communal experience, but the songs also contrast Quint’s fatalism with Hooper and Brody’s strong desire to return to the safety of their homes. For me personally, that scene holds special meaning because my grandfather, like Quint, survived being thrown into the Pacific Ocean when his ship, the USS Franklin, was hit by a Japanese dive bomber on March 19, 1945. When I hear Quint’s story and the men singing together, I think of the long, terrifying hours my grandfather spent in the water, surrounding by the wounded and the dead and wondering if he would ever see his own home again, and I think of his shipmates, 807 in all, who did not survive that day. Eighty years after the sinking of the Indianapolis on July 30, 1945, this scene helps to keep its story, and the untold stories of thousands of men like my grandfather, alive for generations of viewers who were born long after the end of World War II.

The box office success of the original Jaws led to a series of sequels, but only Jaws 2 (1978) brings Roy Scheider back as Chief Brody, along with Murray Hamilton and Lorraine Gary. It’s not a bad horror movie, but it’s really a teen slasher story with the shark in place of the masked killer. Roy Scheider was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The French Connection (1971), but you can also see him in Klute (1971), Marathon Man (1976), Sorcerer (1977), and All That Jazz (1979). Robert Shaw, a trained Shakespearean stage actor and successful writer, earned his own Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966); he also had memorable roles in From Russia with Love (1963) and Robin and Marian (1976), but I am weirdly fond of his 1976 flop, Swashbuckler. For more thoughtful creature features, see Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster hit, Jurassic Park, or the excellent 2017 King Kong reboot, Kong: Skull Island. For a humorous take on the genre, check out Tremors (1990), but if you’re looking for more monster sharks, you’ll find them in Deep Blue Sea (1999).

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— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub

Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.

Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.