Jaws: 50 years since the film that made us afraid when we went swimming in the sea.

Barcelona"Hey, this doesn't remind you of Shark?"My seatmate asks me this while we enjoy the festival of adventure, mystery and sparks of terror. Jurassic World. And yes, the aggressive, swift, mischievous, voracious, vengeful marine dinosaur contains nuances of homage to the shark imagined half a century ago by Steven Spielberg. Explicit homage? Well, it could very well be. The screenwriter of the latest installment of the Jurassic saga is David Koepp, responsible for the scripts for the first and second installments, with Spielberg, of course, imbuing each and every one of the edges and pores of the thick hide. dinosaur. Shark, One of the most important films in the history of cinema has turned fifty. It returns to theaters for a limited time on August 29th, and it's the opportunity to break the curse for anyone who has yet to experience it. And on the big screen! And on top of that, during the summer, so you can immerse yourself even more in the spirit of the film, set in the middle of the heatwave in a small coastal town bursting at the seams with bathers whose tranquility is shattered by a great white shark determined to satisfy its hunger with human flesh. There are many stimulants in this work of art, injected with myth throughout, influential to the core, eternally young.

In 1974, novelist Peter Benchley published a book that immediately took pride of place on Universal's shelves of future projects. Spielberg had just finished filming Crazy escape, his first feature film, and already accrued a cult filmmaker aura thanks to The devil on wheels (1971), a television film that had crossed the television wall to land in movie theaters. It's impressive to think that in just four years, a young filmmaker who hadn't reached his thirties had created two works as revolutionary as The devil on wheels and Shark. The term "visionary" is often overused, but in the world of cinema, it is more justified. It is said that the director saw the book at the production company and immediately proceeded to a kind of vampirization that led to his being appointed to the project. Universal's blind faith in him nearly foundered.

There were no shortage of conflicts during the filming of the movie. First, the adverse weather conditions made it very difficult to successfully execute the complicated maritime scenes of the search and hunt for the shark—the brilliant and fascinating final third of the film. Successive delays, scheduling conflicts, nerves... The special effects were somewhat rudimentary, but they required a minimum of verisimilitude. The shark was manufactured with great craftsmanship by the hired engineering and mechanical technicians. In one of the first scenes they shot, the shark shattered into pieces in the water and they had to rebuild it, with the consequent budgetary problems that this entailed. The three lead actors weren't exactly easy to tame. Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw all had a personality somewhere between unpredictable and volcanic. Scheider's hesitation about his role, Dreyfuss's emotional swings, and Shaw's penchant for brawls—and alcoholic outpourings—turned the filming environment into a powder keg. But Spielberg wasn't afraid. He knew where he wanted to go. He knew the ship he was piloting had a safe harbor on the horizon. And, very importantly, he had the unwavering confidence of one of Universal's heavyweights, Sid Sheinberg, who, when the filming problems were at their most stifling, not only didn't throw in the towel but insisted on greater financial support. A personal factor contributed to this. He had convinced Spielberg to cast the most important female role in the film—the wife of Roy Scheider's character—as his wife, actress Lorraine Gary. There were also notable intangibles involved.

The film was successfully completed. Its final budget was, in today's figures, just over six million euros. The premiere was an atomic bomb. A tsunami that shook the Hollywood industry and had ripple effects throughout the global film industry. It premiered on June 20, 1975, and in its first weekend of release, it already grossed several thousand dollars more than it had cost. It quickly climbed to a record-breaking gross of 10 million dollars. A new concept was born: blockbuster summer blockbuster, something that didn't exist before. The big vocational box office was here to stay. From then on, Hollywood had for decades –still today with Jurassic World, Superman and Fantastic Four– very present the timing summer as a primary strategy in terms of exhibition and box office receipts. But this was not the only effect of the premiere.

With Shark A psychological effect was also born: the fear of the sea through cinema, of the sea monster that can rise from the depths and attack unsuspecting humans who bathe or sail without thinking about the danger that threatens them. strokes or an innocent dive. This is linked to the heartbreaking political reading that Spielberg's film also has. beach bars and local establishments. Negligence as a stubborn political reality, the dominance of the market over the common good, the people abandoned by God in favor of supposedly higher interests. They lived immersed in a not inconsiderable public discontent. Between the terrifying trauma of Vietnam and the Watergate affair, cinema and culture in general had sufficient reasons to fill their productions with rebellious connotations and commitment to the protests and social demands most present in public opinion. Shark was, in this sense, a standard-bearer.

It would not be fair to end without mentioning the perennial influence that Shark Spielberg's influence has been and continues to be felt in cinema, half a century after its release. The proof of Jurassic World: Extinction It's more than clear, but it was already noticeable immediately after the premiere. The shark was the first marine species to become a nightmare for humans, but then came the orcas, crocodiles, and piranhas. Before that, it was the whale, of course, thanks to Herman Melville, Moby Dick It's gone down in history. Who is Robert Shaw's character but a Captain Ahab look-alike? By the way, if you talk to a marine biologist, they'll give you an exhaustive list of the film's absurdities—or poetic licenses. From the shark's disproportionate speed, to its oversized intelligence, its excessive voracity, and a destructive force that has nothing to do with reality. The magic of cinema, they tell you. Or the traps. Blessed traps.