The shark refused to work. The main boat threatened to decrease. The young director who insisted on turning on the open sea. He almost suffered a nervous breakdown. He later admitted that production with serious PTSD symptoms left him. Two of the main actors hated each other. The British stage actor considered the shaggy newcomer to be a snotty Bengel. And his younger co-star saw a drinking actor with megalomania in the veteran. (The third figure in the main trio was satisfied with playing the referee and sunbathing in black swimming trunks.)
The locals were about to rebel against the Hollywood film team, which had come to their isolated island community to turn there. The studio chef personally flew in to examine the extent of the damage. And was ready to cancel the project. Industry leaves published headlines about how this late, buried adaptation of a beach novel would tear everyone involved. Only a friend of the director, a bearded colleague who was currently writing a script that played in a wide, far away galaxy, predicted success. When visiting a set, he took a look at the huge animatronic shark. Which usually did not work. He explained that the film would be a huge hit.
“The White Hai” for the 50th anniversary:
Five decades of film history later we can all laugh about the history of “The White Hai”. Especially since his catastrophic production myth has become an integral part of his inheritance. On June 20, 1975, Steven Spielberg’s story finally came to cinemas about three men and a shark. She broke cash records. Triggered an industry -wide upheaval. And became a pop cultural reference point and a PR bless for tooth-rich white sharks.
An anniversary wave with a bite
John Williams’ made of two tones for the title -giving beings is as recognizable for most people as the beginning of Beethoven’s fifth symphony or “happy birthday”. The film was partially blamed for the fact that it drove the first coffin nail into the so -called “New Hollywood”. And at the same time celebrated for opening a pandora box, from which a certain type of blockbuster jumped for us for 50 summer.
Similar to another film that played on the water 22 years later, “The White Hai” was miraculously opposed to a army of drunk pessimists. And tore the victory out of the, well, mouth of the defeat. The irony that a film that was made on the ocean was redesigned an art form to this day.
He is just as quoted, trivia-compatible and visceral as then
The anniversary is celebrated with the due tamam. Among them Laurent Bouzereaus “Definitive Insider History” documentary “Jaws@50”. An upcoming exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. And a newly recorded introduction of Spielberg itself that runs on Peacock before the film. These honors are lined up in numerous further homage to what Newsweek referred to as “Jawsmania”. From books (we cannot recommend Carl Gottlieb’s indispensable “The Jaws Lo” G enough) to plays to playing Blu-Ray and limited retro cans of Quint’s loved narraganset beer.
Such hype seems almost superfluous. Because the film never really left cultural consciousness. Today it is as quoted, trivia-suitable and visceral as it was then. In the documentary, Superfan Steven Soderbergh remembers the opening scene, in which a nightly swimmer becomes a midnight snack. He wondered: “If you show that in the first five minutes – what the hell do you do in the rest of the film?” The answer: exactly what the shark does with his victim. We and heart until we are breathless. The difference is that “the white shark” does it with a little less frenzy and much more finesse.
The archetype of the blockbuster
If you look at the scene again after a long time, the violence of the attack does not catch the eye. But how dynamically everything is around it. Like his antagonist, Spielberg is blessed with patience. And wait for the perfect moment to strike. There is only minimal preparation. But a maximum maintenance that shows that you are in good hands. Even if the then 28-year-old filmmaker only had one feature film. (In fact, Spielberg had made two films. And he points out that both the Duel produced for television and his “second” film like sibling stories about Leviathane were. Only that one of them plays ashore.)
But the cut from the shark perspective to the campfire scene is shaken, even though it suggests old summer flirting romance. And the silence after the last immersion of the young woman meets all the harder for the nerve -wracking noise. The entire film follows this blueprint. Especially when you think it is safe to look – strikes “the white shark”. Then he withdraws. And wait. And wait …
Today’s blockbusters often lack this ability to juggle such dynamics. And at the age of 50 you can see all the more clearly that “the white shark” was not just a harbinger of what was still to come. But also a child of his time. There is a seventy year-muff over Spielberg’s monster film adventure thriller, even if it goes into roller coaster mode. You can see it in the many mass scenes. Whether on the beach or to full assembly rooms. Most actors were residents of Martha’s Vineyard, who acted excellently as fictional amity. And the director grants them and the surrounding area the whole Norman rockwell-Americana treatment.
A cinema experience that bites
But the faces and fashion, not to mention Paranoia and panic, feel very much like Seventies. Much of the melancholic zeitgeist, who penetrates Peter Benchley’s bestseller, was filtered out – and yet the scene in the dining room of the Brodys, in which Roy Scheider’s police chief wine (!) Tips in a beer glass and Richard Dreyfuss’ skeptical, sarcastic oceanographer suggests at night, as an icing more than just exciting and Horror. Not to mention Murray Hamilton’s mayor, “Tricky” Larry Vaughn.
If you put “the white shark” in the overall context of film history, it becomes all the more clear how Spielberg’s masterpiece is actually the missing link between two other films that shaped the era (and/or the future – depending on): “The exorcist” and “Star Wars”. William Friedkin’s Horror masterpiece from 1973 also takes time before it grabs you on the lapel and triggered the stranger reflex, but visibly tries to be considered a prestige project. George Lucas’ space saga from 1977 is Pavlovsche’s pop pleasure and knows how to modernize dusty B-movie elements for the mass audience.
Feeling for character, a touch of cynicism and healthy skepticism over the system
“The white shark”, almost exactly in the middle between these two snake-front of the cinema hits, is the perfect third porridge: he preserves a feeling for character, a touch of cynicism and healthy skepticism towards the system-such as “The Exorcist”-and plays the audience as efficiently, efficiently and universally as “Star Wars”.
He also delivered a film that was not only looked at, but also experienced-which is why the audience came back again and again and the studio bosses began to chase the treasure of such repetitioners. We are not the first, the Dreyfuss’ description of the white shark as a “perfect engine … a miracle of evolution. This machine does nothing more than swimming, eating and making a small sharks” and at the same time see a great description of the film itself. And we won’t be the last. It is a prime example of cinema as a drug for dopamine kicks-made precisely, with calculated highlights. And that is exactly what “the white shark” is often reproached: he has produced so many baby sharks that have eaten their oceans empty for decades.
Nixon-era-ahab, who holds a history hour about the USS Indianapolis
But Spielberg’s mixture of cinema arrangement on Friday evening, Matinee action on Saturday and Sunday feeling still looks like a predator at the top of the food chain. You get a crazy dose of cinematic technology, through a visual and acoustic language that the young director and his fellow campaigners steal from the past and re -launch for the next generation.
You get a shock moment that exceeds all the shock moments – the Spielberg turned into the pool of his cutter in Los Angeles, for maximum effect. And you get a full hour of seventy character drama with caffeine pushing and one last quarter of an hour that only dashes forward. And you get a Nixon-era-Ahab who holds a history hour about the USS Indianapolis-a monologue in which no less than three authors have wrote down (it is complicated), which we would put in addition to “We will always have Paris” from “Casablanca” and “We create it” pops “. Most contemporary films hardly create one of these elements. “The White Hai” has been offering us all for 50 years – attached to a vehicle with a perfect engine. And Hollywood: You will not only need a bigger one, but also a better blockbuster if you ever want to surpass that.