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LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Fifty years ago, this week, people started thinking twice about taking a dip in the ocean.
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FADEL: 1975's "Jaws" scared the swimsuits right off of audiences.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It soon became clear that the filmmakers were going to need a bigger boat to carry all the money they made. But what impression did this movie make at the very beginning? We went into the archives to hear how NPR reviewed "Jaws," and here is the late, amazing Tom Shales from June 1975.
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TOM SHALES: I spent a few days last summer on the island of Martha's Vineyard, five miles off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. There, the little village of Edgartown had been turned into the equally little but fictional village of Amity for the location filming of "Jaws," that book about shark attacks at a summer resort. I stood and watched the opening scene being filmed during a very cold evening on an otherwise deserted beach. Author Peter Benchley, who wrote the book, and producer Richard Zanuck were watching too and shivering from the cold. I asked Zanuck when the film would be released. Early next summer, he said, fiendishly, just as people are getting ready to go to the beaches.
Now, one year later, "Jaws" is ready to open wide and swallow up the movie-going public. And if it doesn't give people at least a shiver of misgiving about going into the water, nothing could. "Jaws" is going to be a shrieking success, and it may gross more than that major fright of two years ago, "The Exorcist." That's encouraging because "Jaws" is a much better picture, and you don't hate yourself for going to it. It is about more than fear, but fear it is certainly about. It will have audiences jumping in their seats, grabbing for their companions and shivering with suspense, like a good thriller should. But more than that, it seriously and persuasively communicates the frustration and communal consciousness of people in jeopardy. It depicts the plight of imperiled humans with far greater force and conviction than any of the elaborate disaster movies of the past few years.
The people in trouble and the people who rise to battle the danger seem actually to exist. You care about them. They are recognizable as belonging to the same species as you and I. For that achievement, even more than for the considerable technical feat, director Steven Spielberg, who turned 27 while making this picture, deserves enormous congratulations in both standard forms, critical hurrays and millions of dollars in box office receipts. Spielberg builds suspense with a proficiency of a Hitchcock - really. In lesser hands, and there are all kinds of lesser hands making movies these days, it would have been two hours of watching a shark eat people and wondering who would be the next hors d'oeuvre. But Spielberg wants to take us through the gamut, not just jettison a series of scares into our laps. So your mouth falls open in shock one moment at the first sight of the shark's hideous head rising out of the water.
By the way, I haven't heard an audience scream so loud since "Wait Until Dark." And then the next minute, you're laughing. And it's Spielberg, who is able to juggle these elements flawlessly. The threat itself is never a joke. It is gaping and awesome and always there. The comic relief is never extraneous or isolated from the story or characters. "Jaws" dignifies the word thriller so long in disrepute and electrifies an audience in the exhilarating way only the best films can. "Jaws" stands a very good chance of being not only the most successful but the most satisfying American movie of the year. It says a mouthful.
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FADEL: OK, Steve.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
FADEL: I mean, that was 50 years ago. I guess Tom Shales saw into the future.
INSKEEP: Amazing review. I love people seem actually to exist.
FADEL: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Also, Spielberg was 27...
FADEL: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...When he did that film.
FADEL: Before...
INSKEEP: Crazy.
FADEL: ...He was a legend. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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