Curiosities of ‘Jaws’, the film that terrified millions of people around the world, turned 47

In 1975, a young Steven Spielberg would arouse one of the most frequent fears of people who are on the beach. It was the beginning of one of the franchises that would give rise to other sagas, but with other beasts as protagonists: dragons, gorillas, crocodiles, anacondas, piranhas, in short, a whole allegory of creatures that have brought together millions of fans around the world. .

Jaws celebrated 47 years of its premiere and was the first box office success for Spielberg. But how did it all start?

The film, a classic of horror and suspense, was based on a tragedy that did occur off the coast of New Jersey in 1916. It was from that incident when four bathers died due to an attack by a great white shark almost three meters long, which terrorized that part of the United States for two weeks. That was the trigger for the prolific filmmaker to create one of the most threatening marine creatures in cinema in history.

Furthermore, with the impact of Sharkthe great era of merchandising: T-shirts, towels, objects, games and more accessories based on the terrifying animal proliferated and the image of its jaws in close-up multiplied around the world.

But Jaws (English title of the film) was based on the book by Peter Benchley published in 1974, which was also a bestseller. In fact, the writer and journalist was trying to save his career when he penned the shark story that blew millions of readers and moviegoers out of the water.

Benchley, who had always been interested in water and sharks, came up with the idea of Shark when he read about a fisherman who caught a 4,500-pound great white shark off the coast of Long Island in 1964.

In the film, the fictional beaches of Amity Island were the scene of the killing and subsequent hunting of the shark, by local police, a marine biologist and professional shark hunter, played by Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw.

Some curiosities

• In the actual Jersey Beach shark attacks of 1916 (reported by Brody and Hooper in the film), the sequence of attacks is similar to that in the film: a swimmer in the surf, a dog, a child, and a man’s leg. man in a tidal marsh.

• Steven Spielberg, who was not yet 30 years old when he began to generate this project, one of the most ambitious in the genre up to then, chose the island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, as the setting for the filming. The director wanted a real ocean to film the scenes, and despite the difficulties, it happened.
• The killer shark that became famous on the big screen was actually a mechanical replica. To highlight the presence of the fearsome predatory fish, the director resorted to some unmistakable chords composed by John Williams that, even today, are used to sonically illustrate the disturbing idea of ​​imminent danger.
• When composer John Williams originally played the score for director Steven Spielberg, Spielberg laughed and said, “That’s funny, John, really; but what did you really have in mind for the subject of Shark (1975)?”. Spielberg later stated that without Williams’s score, the film would have been only half as successful and, according to Williams, it jump-started his career.
• Despite the eventful shooting of the shark’s mechanical replica that didn’t always work as expected, pushing production three months longer than planned and tripling the budget, the film was a box office hit and the filmmaker’s first big hit. The difficulties paid off and more than: it cost 9 million and raised more than 500 million dollars.

• During pre-production, director Steven Spielberg, accompanied by his friends Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and John Milius, visited the effects shop where “Bruce the Shark” was being built. Lucas stuck his head into the shark’s mouth to see how it worked, and as a joke, Milius and Spielberg sneaked up to the controls and made the jaw close on Lucas’s head. Unfortunately, and rather presciently, considering the subsequent technical difficulties the production would suffer, the shark malfunctioned and Lucas was caught in the shark’s mouth. When Spielberg and Milius were finally able to free it, the three men ran out of the workshop, fearful that they had caused great damage to the creature.
• Added to the mechanical problems of the fictitious shark, created especially for the big screen, was the extreme fatigue of the technical crew filming at sea, with unfavorable conditions that included frequent dizziness, heat stroke and the like that, on dry land, would not pass. Many times they had to suspend the filming by a technician or assistant who was not in physical condition.

• The first shark killed on the docks, which is supposed to be the “man-eater” in the movie, was actually a real shark killed in Florida as there wasn’t one big enough on Martha’s Vineyard. According to The Jaws Log, Carl Gottlieb’s book, when it was shipped to the set and prepared for filming, it started to decompose quite a bit and the smell was awful. As he was dangled from his tail, his internal organs came loose and bunched up in the back of his throat, adding to the discomfort of those forced to work near him.
• Shark it won three Oscars (best editing, best soundtrack and best sound). Spielberg managed to have the film considered one of the 100 best in the history of cinema.
• This was the first film to hit the coveted $100 million mark in “theatrical rentals,” which is roughly 45% of “box office gross.” It was the highest grossing of all time in the United States until Star Wars (1977).
• Following the film’s release, a kind of hysteria gripped some members of the public, leading to numerous incidents across the United States. In one, lifeguards cleared a beach in southern California because of sharks in the water, which turned out to be dolphins; and in a sadder incident in Florida, a beached immature pygmy sperm whale was bludgeoned to death by passers-by who mistook it for a shark.

The movie Shark (1975) is available on Netflix.