'Jaws': 50 Years of the Bloodiest Beach Swim

“I was quite afraid of water, and I wanted everyone to feel the same way. This film feeds on the paranoia of not knowing what might lie beneath us when we're in the sea,” confesses Steven Spielberg in the documentary 50 Years of Jaws , directed by Olivier Bonnard and Antoine Coursat (Movistar Plus+). With this instant classic of horror cinema, the filmmaker recreated at sea what Alfred Hitchcock had done earlier in Psycho (1960) with a shower and a knife, traumatizing an entire generation of viewers. All of this is supported by John Williams' chilling score, which, with just two base notes, sent shivers down the spines of audiences' faces and became forever ingrained in the collective imagination.

The film was based on the eponymous best-selling book published in 1974 by American journalist and writer Peter Benchley, which drew on true events that occurred in the summer of 1916, when the beaches of New Jersey were the scene of a wave of shark attacks that claimed the lives of four people in just twelve days. These events, combined with the exploits of the famous shark hunter Frank Mundus, and the influence of classic adventure literature such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick , inspired a story that serves as a metaphor for capitalist corruption set in the fictional town of Amity, a small town on the Atlantic coast of the United States that relies primarily on tourism.

One morning, shortly before the start of the summer season, the body of a young woman is found on the beach, apparently attacked by a great white shark. The mayor refuses to close the beaches, as it might scare away vacationers and the lucrative tourist industry. But a few days later, a young boy feeds the enormous jaws of the underwater beast. Until a group of men set out to sea to hunt it down.

The novel fell into the hands of Universal producers David Brown Baren and Richard D. Zanuck, who were captivated by the harrowing tale of horror and suspense, for which they paid $175,000 in royalties. They were convinced that the material they had read should be brought to the big screen. And they were right. Jaws 's June 20 release—it would arrive in Spain on December 19—was an unprecedented commercial success: it inaugurated the blockbuster era, prompting studios to focus virtually all their attention and business model on creating huge hits, especially in the summer; it revolutionized animal horror films, positioning itself as one of the greatest cinematic milestones of all time, and launched the career of a young and unknown Steven Spielberg, the future Midas of Hollywood.

The film grossed nearly $475 million worldwide, an all-time record until it was surpassed two years later by the first Star Wars film (1977), ultimately directed by Spielberg's friend George Lucas. With its shocking scenes of blood and severed limbs, the film managed to scare much of the public into ever-present water, creating a genuine paranoia that severely impacted beach hotel reservations.

Spielberg attended the premiere of Jaws on March 26 at the Medallion Theater in Dallas. Doped up on valium to calm his nerves, the director stood at the back of the theater, ready to observe the audience's reaction. After the sequence in which the shark surprises the boy from the inflatable mattress, a front-row audience member ran out and vomited on the foyer carpet. He then sat back down. "At that moment, I knew the movie would be a hit," he later confessed.

“I wanted to make Jaws for hostile reasons. In a way, it appealed to my most basic instincts,” Spielberg said.

Until then, he wasn't entirely sure because the shoot had been a living hell. At 27, Spielberg had worked in television—he surprised audiences in 1971 with the TV movie Duel (Duel )—and made his feature film directorial debut with his first feature film, The Escape (1974). He was seduced by the book, although he didn't get along well with Benchley, who was in charge of writing the initial drafts. So he enlisted the help of his colleague Carl Gottlieb to rewrite the script during filming. “I wanted to make Jaws for hostile reasons. In a way, it appealed to my most basic instincts... I didn't enjoy shooting it, but I did have a great time planning it,” said the director, who left out stars like Charlton Heston in favor of lesser-known leads so the audience could better empathize with the characters.

Roy Scheider played Police Chief Brody. Robert Shaw played the grumpy sailor Quint, and Richard Dreyfuss ventured out as biologist Martin Hooper. Three men in pursuit of a man-eating monster, for which three expensively crafted mechanical replicas, each 23 feet long, were nicknamed Bruce after a former Spielberg lawyer. Since the director wanted to film on the high seas in the coastal town of Martha's Vineyard, the mechanical sharks—each requiring 14 people to operate its moving parts—frequently broke down due to the salty water. When the filmmaker saw the pitiful results of the special effects, he opted to minimize the marine predator's on-screen time until well into the film. By using foreshadowing and sound, the suggested threat was that much more terrifying. Ultimately, the genius lies in not seeing the killer protagonist.

The filming schedule went from 55 days to 159, and the initial $3 million budget ended up being over nine million. Later, Spielberg himself would admit that his stubbornness and inexperience were the cause of these missteps, which ultimately also revealed a unique talent and daring, orchestrating the emotions of a fear-filled audience at will. After the titanic shoot wrapped, Universal poured itself into promoting the film, investing nearly $2 million more to create an exceptional television campaign to date.

Jaws received mostly positive reviews, praising the filmmaker's ability to create tension and entertainment. In the awards race, it won three Oscars: editing, score, and sound. It was also nominated for Best Picture, a category won by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest .

Although off-screen shark attacks remained very rare, the negative perception that both the film and the book generated about sharks led to a frenzy of sport fishermen who decimated the great white shark population, a situation Spielberg has long lamented. Scientists and biologists also blamed the film for unfairly portraying the great white shark as a vengeful creature.

Its premiere on June 20, 1975, created a real fear among bathers to go back into the sea.

The original film was followed by three official sequels: the entertaining Jaws 2 (1978) and the embarrassing The Great Shark (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987), in addition to the birth of a new subgenre, sharksploitation , with sagas such as Deep Blue See , The Meg and Sharknado .

To commemorate the anniversary, Planeta has published a commemorative edition of the book, National Geographic will release the documentary special "Jaws: The Story of a Classic" on Disney+ on July 10, and various events have been organized on Martha's Vineyard this weekend and throughout the summer. While, half a century after its release, advanced special effects and CGI have allowed for the almost lifelike appearance of striking sharks on screen, no other film has come close to the chills of Spielberg's first Jaws and its iconic poster. Fancy a dip?