What does the shark that during one long, hot summer in 1974 attacks and kills the bathers on the island of Amity, symbolise? Ever since the monster moved from the pages of Peter Benchley’s novel to the images of Steven Spielberg’s second feature for the big screen, many often contradictory hypotheses have been proposed. It has been interpreted psychoanalytically and politically (is it mere coincidence, in a film made after Watergate had called into question the fundamentals of American democracy, that the bloody consequences of the scrabble for profit are revealed on the symbolic date of 4 July?). It has been read as patriarchal and misogynist; as ecological tract (nature reclaiming its territory); and anti-animal (with the director recently apologising for the bad reputation that the film gave these big fish of the deep).
What is certain is that the shark provokes fear, in the purest and most primordial sense: a fear of that which cannot be seen, of a hidden danger that, thanks also to John Williams’ music, we can only hear as it approaches. Something like the fear of the dark, but recreated by Spielberg on a sunny New England beach.
On occasion, however, our gaze coincides with that of the shark, as subjective shots from the point-of-view of the predator make us unwitting accomplices to the violence that is about to be perpetrated. In short, the audience for Jaws is afraid because it sees too much and too little.
In the on-set photos, Spielberg poses with the mechanical shark that caused so many problems; he is little more than a boy, like his alter ego at the end of The Fabelmans, but he already has a clear idea of where to “put the horizon” or what separates an interesting shot from a boring one. Another striking element is the film’s perfect construction of suspense, which is almost unbearable in the scene on the crowded beach: Psycho reinterpreted for the sense of freedom of the 1970s, just before the headfirst dive into the 1980s. Jaws is also the very first blockbuster in the history of cinema, it was released just before Star Wars finally swept the New Hollywood aside. That’s quite a lot, for just a scary film.

Gianluca De Santis