In 1975, Spielberg’s first feature film, Jaw’s was the first summer blockbuster ever while being the top grossing movie of year by almost 3-1 with $484,351,938. Just think about what those dollars translate in today’s world.
It scared people so much, they refused to go to in the water.
Jaws became a cultural icon. Its influence has stretched from the movie theater, to summer picnics, to barrooms, subways, haystack rides, barbecues, beaches, oceans, television, and so on.
Even the greatest film critic ever, Pauline Kale was wowed by the film:
It may be the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made. Even while you’re convulsed with laughter you’re still apprehensive, because the editing rhythms are very tricky, and the shock images loom up huge, right on top of you. The film belongs to the pulpiest sci-fi monster-movie tradition, yet it stands some of the old conventions on their head.–When Shaw begins showing off his wounds, the bookish ichthyologist, Richard Dreyfuss, strings along with him at first, and matches him scar for scar. But when the ichthyologist is outclassed in the number of scars he can exhibit, he opens his shirt, looks down at his hairy chest, and with a put-on artist’s grin says, “You see that? Right there? That was Mary Ellen Moffit-she broke my heart.” Shaw squeezes an empty beer can flat; Dreyfuss satirizes him by crumpling a Styrofoam cup. The director, Steven Spielberg, sets up bare-chested heroism as a joke and scores off it all through the movie.
Open thread away.
