Jaws: 50 years since the film that made us afraid when we swim in the sea

Barcelona"Hey, doesn't this remind you of Shark?", My seatmate asks me this while we enjoy the festival of adventure, mystery and sparks of terror: Jurassic World. Extinction. 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, this term is more justified. Conflicts during the filming of the movie. First, the adverse weather conditions made the success of the complicated maritime scenes of the search for and hunt for the shark very difficult: the brilliant and fascinating final third of the film. Successive delays. Crafted with great craftsmanship by the hired engineering and mechanical technicians. Unpredictable and volcanic. Scheider's doubts about his role, Dreyfuss's emotional swings, and Shaw's penchant for brawling—and for alcoholic outpourings—turned the atmosphere into a rodeo. Very importantly, with the blind 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. 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. In fact, in several coastal towns similar to the one featured in the film, residents and visitors had to be made aware that there was no danger to their lives if they decided to enter the sea and do a few strokes or an innocent dive. This is linked to the heartbreaking political interpretation that Spielberg's film also has. The town mayor, despite warnings from experts and the social alarm created, refuses to close the beach because this would mean economic disaster for the town, which receives every summer a huge flow of bathers with their pockets full to consume in all the local beach bars and 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. Peter Benchley, the novel's author, was keen to capitalize on these supplementary readings, and the film doesn't exactly tiptoe around them. Indeed, in the mid-1970s, the United States was immersed in a considerable amount of public discontent. Between the terrifying trauma of Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, cinema and culture in general had sufficient reason to imbue their productions with rebellious connotations and a commitment to the protests and social demands most present in public opinion. Shark was, in that sense, a standard-bearer.

It would not be fair to end without mentioning the perennial influence that the 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.