This past week saw the long awaited Blu-ray debut of Steven Spielberg’s classic film Jaws. In reviewing this new Blu-ray, I’m not going to review the actual movie itself because really, if you’re reading a site called Geekscape and you’ve never seen Jaws, well….I’m not even sure what to say to that, except you should probably get on that and rent it already. Or better yet, just buy the new Blu-ray sight unseen. Unless you have really awful taste in film, you won’t regret it. Because Jaws isn’t just one one of the greatest genre films of all time, it is one of the greatest films of all time, period. And in many ways helped create the modern movie landscape we all live in today.
How Jaws Changed Everything
To say Jaws changed the movie marketplace is not doing the film justice. Star Wars gets a lot of credit for being the first Summer Blockbuster, but the truth is Jaws did it two years before Star Wars hit cinemas, in the Summer of 1975. Popular opinion says that the 1970’s was the age of the more serious, director driven adult movies, especially in comparison to today. When people say “the films of the 70’s” they think of films like Taxi Driver, Apocalypse, Now and The Deer Hunter. And to a large extent that is true, the 70’s was the last great age of serious films coming out of the Hollywood system. But it was also the birth of the modern Hollywood blockbuster era.
The blueprint for how modern Hollywood movies are contstructed, filmed and eventually marketed began in the 1970’s. While more serious adult fare was indeed becoming the norm in Hollywood, also true was the rise of once disreputable source material given the A list treatment by the movie studios. Two mega blockbusters that predated Jaws by just a couple of years were The Godfather and The Exorcist, one a gangster movie and the other a supernatural horror film. In the previous decades in Hollywood, neither of those subject matters was considered “serious” enough to be given the A List treatment that movies like The Ten Commandments or The Sound of Music got, and were always relegated to B pictures at the local drive in. Both movies proved that the American masses loved their pulp fiction, and they also love their pulp fiction done with a high degree of integrity. The one-two punch of both of those moves layed the groundwork for Jaws being the gigantic hit it became, not just here but all over the world.
While there were mega hit movies before, what Jaws was, though, was the first true Summer blockbuster, and the first movie to take true advantage of a wide release, instead of the slow rollout over the course of several months from city to city, as was always done before. Until Jaws, a typical Hollywood movie would debut in say, New York, then months later in Chicago, or LA, and a movie could play differently in one city in comparison to the next. If a movie performed badly in too many cities, it just might not ever even make it to release where you live. The idea of releasing a movie nationwide, with a major marketing blitz of television ads and merchandising behind it, was started by Jaws.
The Digital Transfer And Restoration
Instead of reviewing the actual movie here, because I think it is pretty safe to assume you’ve seen it or at the very least know it is a classic, I’m just going to review the new Blu- ray transfer of the film instead. In short, the transfer is stunning. There were moments it was hard to believe I was watching a movie from 1975 (although some of the more hideous clothes and hairstyles served to remind me, especially Mayor Vaughn’s horrid jackets) The team assigned to the restoration of Jaws should be given some kind of an award, because their work on this movie is breathtaking. As shown in one of the special features included on the disc, Jaws was painstakingly restored frame by frame, with every piece of dirt and every scratch removed from the original camera negative. But although dirt and scratches were removed, there wasn’t any annoying digital grain removal, the kind that gives older movies that weird plasticy look at times. The result is a movie that looks like it was shot yesterday, but isn’t overly glossy or too polished looking. The grit is still there, but not in your face.
I’m not an audiophile, so it is hard for me to really review the sound on this Blu ray (my speakers are merely my television speakers) I will say that the new Blu ray has the original mono track as well as a new DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, for those of you for whom that means something. For me thought, the real treasure on this Blu-ray, aside from the movie itself of course, is the wealth of special features, especially the two feature length documentaries included here.
Young Steven Spielberg and “Bruce” the mechanical shark that almost never worked. Bruce was named after Spielberg’s lawyer. Oh Steven, you crack up you.
The Making of Jaws (1995)
Steven Spielberg is infamous for not providing audio commentary on any of his films. I’m not sure why, because he has no problem talking about his movies in great detail in other special features in the form of rather lengthy interviews. A rather lengthy interview with Spielberg is included on this disc in The Making of Jaws, Laurent Bouzereau’s 2 hour long documentary from the 1995 Laserdisc box set. In this documentary, not only does Spielberg go into great detail about the making of the film, but there are also lots of other talking head interviews with the likes of original novelist Peter Benchley, Roy Schieder, Richard Dreyfuss, composer John Williams, and producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown, along with most of the main principal players behind the making of the movie.
The whole thing is shot in a very boring manner, 80’s PBS style, and the production value scream “on the cheap,” but this was a time when any movie was lucky to get a special feature in any capacity. (the 90’s were a dark time for film geeks. Laserdiscs cost a fortune, and barely had any special features. You brats today don’t know how lucky you are) But if you can get past the low grade production standards, this two hour doc is a wealth of information on the making of Jaws, and worth watching all two hours of. I’m so glad Universal included it here, despite how dated it all looks. Looks aren’t everything after all.
The Shark Is Still Working (2009)
In many ways though, the crown jewel of the special features is the documentary The Shark Is Still Working. The documentary was made by “Jaws” fans James Gelet, Jake Gove, Erik Hollander, and James-Michael Roddy over a seven-year period, using Laurent Bouzereau’s1995 documentary, The Making of Jaws as merely a starting off point. The movie gets its name from the often told anecdotes of Richard Dreyfuss, who in interviews often shared stories about the troubled production of Jaws and the quote “The shark is NOT working” which he said he heard over and over again from frustrated members of the crew. Once the mechanical shark was finally up and running, Dreyfuss would regularly hear the quote “The shark is still working” with equal regularity. Unlike The Making of Jaws, this documentary delves into every aspect of the Jaws phenomenon, from the brutal shoot in the Summer of 1974 off of Martha’s Vineyard with an overwhelmed twenty six year old Steven Spielberg, to the merchandising avalanche that followed, to things like Jawsfest today, where fans gather and share their adoration of all things related to the film.
This documentary leaves no Jaws stone unturned, interviewing people like the artist who created the original iconic movie poster, the various real life locals who played small parts in the movie, and even the man who provided the narration in the oh so very effective trailer to the film, Percy Rodriguez, whose trailer tagline was just as iconic for an entire generation as the movie itself (“It is as if God made the devil, and gave him…JAWS!” Brilliant!) This documentary was completed in 2007 or so, and shown at many festivals to rave reviews, but legal red tape has held up the films release until now. It seems perfect and fitting that the movie is finally released on the same Blu ray as Jaws itself.
Aside from The Shark Is Still Working, the Blu ray has tons of other special features, like On The Set, a BBC news report made from the actual Martha’s Vineyard shooting location back in 1974, deleted scenes and outtakes, storyboards, trailers. The only thing really missing from the movie is a commentary track, but Spielberg never does them for any movie, so it isn’t a big shock really.
If you’re a fan of this movie, this is a must own Blu-ray. I don’t care if you have the DVD already, time to Ebay that shit. This is how Steven Spielberg’s classic needs to be viewed from here on out. So do yourself a favor and buy Jaws on Blu-ray.