Few films if any have proven so influential in so many areas of the movie industry as Jaws. It established Steven Spielberg as the wunderkind filmmaker; he would go on to become the most well-known and popular filmmaker since Alfred Hitchcock. Jaws pioneered the wide release approach to distribution which — combined with TV ads, another major innovation, given their frequency and effectiveness — is the template for most studio films today. It turned summer into the prime time for major movies, which seems obvious now (kids are out of school! people want to avoid the heat!) but back then summer was for dumping schlock. It shot on location on the water, something that studios avoided like the plague for 70 years until Spielberg came along and decided that was the only way to make it right. jaws pushed the boundaries on technology and far more importantly demonstrated how creativity and cleverness were far more important than special effects. It turned composer John Williams into a pop star, the most recognizable composer of his era and probably in history, just as Spielberg is the most famous filmmaker of our times. The music entered pop culture forever. The making-of book by Carl Gottlieg which was tossed off almost as an afterthought, is a model of its kind. The Jaws Log — which I read for the first time this month — must have been revelatory in the 1970s for its peek behind the scenes. Audiences today are much savvier and I do wish more time were spent on creative decisions. But as a record of how movies are made and life on the set, it is great fun and as accurate today as it was then. (Just add some zeros to the various costs involved.) Jaws was the first film released on laserdisc in North America. The making-of documentary by Laurent Bouzereau in a later laser disc edition also set a high standard. The film has been celebrated and discussed online by fervent fans since the internet began and in fact a new documentary called The Shark Is Still Working is a crowd-sourced labor of love kickstarted by that online community and in the works for seven years. Testimonials from numerous younger filmmakers prove what a seismic effect it had on Hollywood’s future generations. Both documentaries are available on this new BluRay edition. In short, jaws changed the way movies are made, when they’re released, how they’re released, how they are marketed and sold, how they’re packaged for home entertainment and how they’re remembered online. As a bonus, it’s also a great film — adult, smart, terrifically fun and filled with marvelous performances from Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider on down. None of this would matter half as much to most people if the movie itself weren’t indeed Hitchcockian in its innately cinematic approach to telling the primal story of a monster on the loose. Other films will always rank higher on the list of all-time best films. (Heck, it’s not even my favorite Spielberg movie.) But Jaws in many ways can lay claim to the most influential movie in Hollywood’s history.
