Jaws

NEW 35mm PRINT! ► The modern blockbuster starts here. Steven Spielberg’s exhilarating tale of a resort community terrorized by a great white shark was a blood-in-the-water game-changer: Jaws (along with George Lucas’s Star Wars two years later) sparked a feeding-frenzy of big-budget, mass-marketed, high-concept, high-stakes action/adventure event movies, now the very cornerstone of Hollywood’s business model. Based on Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel, Jaws is directed by the 28-year-old Spielberg with a deft, suggestive, Hitchcockian approach to suspense. Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss are, respectively, the lawman, shark hunter, and marine biologist who join forces to battle the man-eating monster. The town’s cynical leadership, meanwhile, is most horrified by the fact the hungry shark is bad for business. Spielberg’s shark’s-eye camera makes sly play with viewer complicity; not since Hitchcock’s Psycho, which also messed with viewer voyeurism, has a film made moviegoers so afraid to get wet. Jaws became the highest grossing film of all time (Star Wars would surpass it) and made Spielberg both a household name and the most bankable of Hollywood commodities. John Williams’s famed score earned an Oscar, as did Verna Fields’s sensational editing. Colour, 35mm. 124 mins.