When Spielberg almost went swimming: Daa-dam, Daa-dam: 50 years of "Jaws"

When "Jaws" was released 50 years ago, the German cinema landscape was not yet dominated by large multiplexes, but rather by many smaller cinemas. Important advertising media were posters and stills displayed in glass cases in the entrance area of ​​every cinema.

The poster for “Jaws” is one of the most memorable ever: a gigantic shark head with its mouth open beneath a swimming woman.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the film's release (it was released in the US on June 20, 1975, but in West Germany only in December '75), Universal Pictures is bringing the film back to selected cinemas this year.

Combined with the published stills, 50 years ago, a West German elementary schoolchild could vividly imagine the horrors of the film. Seeing the film was, of course, impossible—it had an age restriction of 16—but the images triggered a mental imagery.

This led to longer breaks in front of the cinema every day, both on the way to and from school.

Without knowing it, this was already very close to the essence of the film: For in the first 80 minutes, the shark itself is barely visible. Director Steven Spielberg, then only 28 years old, relied on a well-known insight of the horror genre: fear is not generated by what one sees, but by what one senses.

Accordingly, he largely limited himself to hints, such as John Williams ' music with the alarming Daa-dam, Daa-dam, or underwater shots from the shark's perspective.

One of the best scenes is the one in which an entire fishing pier is torn off by the force of the giant fish and sent hurtling into the sea—then suddenly turns around and rushes toward a fisherman who has fallen into the water. Here, too, there's no sign of the monster itself.

This stylistic element is a key element in the film's appeal—but it was largely used out of sheer embarrassment. The seven-and-a-half-meter-long, outrageously expensive mechanical shark dummy that had been built for the film (along with two smaller ones) didn't work.

"Bruce," as Spielberg named the model after his lawyer, sank into the sea at the beginning of filming, gurgling. "His tail was sticking out of the water, waving like Flipper," Spielberg later recalled in a TV interview.

"There was another explosion, and all the pneumatic cables flew around like snakes. Then it went quiet. There was a final burp of bubbles, and that was the last time we saw the shark—for about three weeks."

So now he had to make a shark movie without a shark. And when he finally got it back, it was cross-eyed and its jaw wouldn't close properly. Spielberg feared that "Bruce" would become a laughingstock, so he decided to show it as little as possible.

And that's not all the difficulties: About halfway through the film, the action shifts from the coast to the open sea. However, no one had dared to shoot at sea for an extended period before—and for good reason, as it turns out.

Shooting in the summer of 1974 off the East Coast island of Martha's Vineyard proved to be incredibly stressful. Not only did the actors get seasick, but it was regatta season, which meant that sailboats were constantly appearing on the horizon.

And then filming had to be suspended every time, because the final battle with the shark was supposed to look like it was taking place in the solitude of the ocean. The ability to airbrush out a boat from the background didn't exist at the time.

The number of shooting days tripled, as did the costs. Spielberg recalled in a National Geographic documentary that he was convinced this would mean the end of his career. "I had nightmares for years afterward. I was still on set, and the shoot would never end."

In fact, “Jaws,” which had its theatrical release in the US in June, recouped its production costs many times over, becoming the most successful film in cinema history to date.

Looking back, "Jaws"—as the film is originally titled—is considered the birth of the summer blockbuster. Today, it's almost forgotten that until then, it was often said that cinemas no longer had a future—people could watch films on television, after all.

"Jaws" ushered in a new era of expensive Hollywood productions, launched with unprecedented advertising and generating a portion of their revenue from merchandising. Watching them became an experience only possible on the big screen in the company of many others.

Even today, half a century later, the thriller still works. One of the three main characters, the gruff shark hunter Quint, seems like a harbinger of the Trump era through the lens of 2025: He rejects the science of marine biologist Matt Hooper and mocks him as a spoiled city dweller.

During the shark hunt, he becomes consumed by revenge fantasies and deliberately cuts off all contact with the outside world. His irresponsible behavior causes the boat to sink – for which he pays with his own life.

The real unsympathetic character, however, is the mayor of the seaside resort, who, out of greed for profit, wants to keep the beaches open at all costs. The communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro therefore described "Jaws" as a "wonderful parable of the corruption of capitalism."

Perhaps the film's most lasting impact was that it triggered primal fears of swimming in the ocean in countless people. It's the paranoia of not knowing what lies beneath the water's surface.

"Watch this film before you go swimming," the advertisements read. At the same time, sharks, especially great white sharks, were demonized, contributing to the decimation of their populations.

Fortunately, the picture has changed in recent years, also due to the influence of the media: videos shared millions of times on social networks show divers swimming with great white sharks without protection and even touching them.

It becomes clear here that Steven Spielberg's killer fish is hardly more real than the T-Rex from "Jurassic Park," which he brought to the screen 20 years later. He remained faithful to the monsters—but he never made another film on water.

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