Plot Summary
Set in the seaside town of Amity Island, Jaws begins with a young woman attacked and killed by a mysterious force in the ocean. As beachgoers flood the town for the summer, Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) becomes convinced a great white shark is prowling the waters. Despite mounting evidence—and another death—the mayor refuses to close the beaches, fearing the loss of tourism revenue. Brody teams up with marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and hardened shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) to track and kill the creature.
The film shifts in tone from political thriller and public panic to maritime adventure and primal horror as the trio sets out into the open sea. What follows is a game of survival—man vs. nature, rationality vs. instinct, and control vs. chaos.
Production Difficulties and Improvisation
Behind its smooth surface, Jaws was anything but easy to make. It was, by Spielberg’s own admission, a “massive production failure”—one that constantly threatened to derail the entire film.
What went wrong?
- The mechanical shark – nicknamed “Bruce” – malfunctioned constantly. It was designed to function in controlled tanks, but filming in the unpredictable Atlantic Ocean exposed all its flaws.
- The ocean itself was an enormous logistical nightmare: boats sank, camera equipment failed, weather shifted unpredictably.
- The original screenplay, which hewed more closely to Peter Benchley’s novel (with a melodramatic mafia subplot and infidelity arc), was deemed unfilmable in its current form and had to be revised on the fly.
As a result:
- The production ballooned from a planned 70-day shoot to nearly 180 days.
- Spielberg and editor Verna Fields began to build suspense through suggestion rather than spectacle – largely because they had no working shark to show.
- Many scenes were rewritten or improvised on set, including Quint’s chilling “USS Indianapolis” monologue, which was refined and re-performed several times before the final version was captured.
This forced adaptation turned into creative alchemy. What could have been a B-movie became a masterclass in implication, pacing, and tonal precision.
Rather than sink the film, the chaos taught Spielberg (and filmmakers everywhere) that improvisation and constraint can lead to artistic breakthroughs.
Salvation Through Editing and Scripting
The final film, despite its rocky production, is now seen as a masterclass in structure—and much of that credit belongs to editor Verna Fields, one of the great unsung heroes of the project.
How it was saved:
- Fields and Spielberg spent months in the editing room rebuilding the film from raw footage, reshaping sequences and restructuring entire scenes for maximum tension.
- Dialogue-heavy or redundant scenes were cut; the pacing was sharpened; the storytelling refocused on character, escalation, and rhythm.
- The script, originally cobbled together from Peter Benchley’s novel and rewrites by Carl Gottlieb, was refined in the editing room into something lean, tight, and mythic.
What emerged was:
- A classic three-act structure with a clear protagonist (Brody) who undergoes a transformation—from passive authority figure to active hero.
- Rounded, conflicted supporting characters (Quint, Hooper, the Mayor) with clear arcs and agendas.
- Scenes that advance story and character simultaneously—a screenwriting hallmark rarely seen in genre films of the time.
🡒 “The film was saved by editing,” Spielberg later said, and the results speak for themselves. It’s a testament to how cinema is often born not in shooting, but in shaping.
Why Jaws Was Groundbreaking
Released in June 1975, Jaws didn’t just redefine success—it invented it. It was the first film to open in hundreds of theaters simultaneously, backed by a massive nationwide TV ad campaign. It became the first film to gross over $100 million and held the title of highest-grossing film of all time until Star Wars arrived two years later.
But Jaws didn’t change film history with marketing alone—it did so through craft. It redefined what genre filmmaking could be: visceral, intelligent, commercially viable, and artistically refined. For filmmakers, it became the prototype for suspense, pacing, and how to manipulate audience psychology through visual and auditory means.
The “Less is More” Approach: A Triumph of Constraint
Famously, Spielberg had planned to show the mechanical shark (“Bruce”) far more frequently. But technical issues plagued the production, rendering most of the footage unusable. Rather than ruin the film, this limitation forced Spielberg into what would become one of the most influential directorial pivots in cinema: show less, suggest more.
Using:
- Point-of-view (POV) shots from the shark’s perspective,
- Underwater tracking, and
- John Williams’ minimalistic, rhythmic score,
he built suspense through implied presence, not spectacle.
🡒 The result: fear of the unseen shark became far more powerful than any on-screen monster
The Use of Color: Subtle, Symbolic, and Psychological
Though Jaws is not typically remembered for bold or expressive color schemes, Spielberg’s use of color is deliberate, functional, and emotionally charged. Color in Jaws is not decorative—it’s strategic. It guides emotion, builds tension, and emphasizes key narrative elements with startling efficiency.
Blue vs. Red – Visual Shock and Emotional Contrast
Blue dominates the palette of Jaws: the ocean, the sky, the police uniforms, even the lighting in many daytime scenes. This calm, naturalistic base is what makes the rare appearance of red—especially blood—so jarring and unforgettable.
In the iconic scene where the child is killed by the shark, the explosion of red blood in the blue sea becomes one of the film’s most traumatic and indelible images. Red appears rarely, but always as a signal of danger, death, or panic; its absence only intensifies its impact when it does emerge.
Spielberg understands that within a subdued color space, a sudden burst of red functions as pure cinematic alarm.
Perhaps the most iconic visual substitution in the film is the use of yellow barrels. After the malfunctioning shark prop prevented Spielberg from showing the creature itself, the floating barrels—attached to the shark via harpoons—became stand-ins for its presence.
The bright yellow cuts sharply through the deep blue ocean, creating an immediate visual cue. Even when the shark isn’t seen, the audience feels its presence through the color, a constant, ominous reminder that something lurks below. The barrels become an extension of the monster. Spielberg turned a technical problem into a masterstroke of visual suspense.
White, Black, and Character Symbolism
- Chief Brody is often dressed in lighter colors—white, beige, pale blue – evoking civility, order, and modern life.
- Quint, the hardened shark hunter, wears darker, earthier tones—green, brown, charcoal—connecting him with instinct, survivalism, and the primal.
- The shark itself is a blend of gray and shadow—almost invisible underwater, nearly colorless. It symbolizes the unnatural predator, a being that doesn’t belong to the human-coded world of moral distinctions or civilized color cues.
🡒 Color in Jaws helps construct a visual hierarchy: between land and sea, law and chaos, humanity and nature.
Why It Matters
The use of color in Jaws may appear naturalistic at first glance, but it’s deeply embedded in the film’s emotional architecture. Spielberg uses color:
- To direct attention,
- To signal danger,
- To imbue objects (like the barrels) with symbolic meaning,
- And to differentiate between character worldviews and thematic binaries.
🡒 It’s a silent language in the film – one that speaks directly to the body, bypassing logic to tap into instinctual fear and anticipation.
Music and Silence as Psychological Triggers
John Williams’ now-iconic two-note motif is more than a soundtrack—it’s a psychological tool. It begins slow, grows faster, mimicking a heartbeat, escalating until attack.
But Spielberg and Williams also use strategic silence to unsettle the viewer. In several key moments—such as the beach attack with the child—no music plays until the last second, making the intrusion of the shark cue a sudden wave of terror.
Why it works:
- Music tells the audience when to fear.
- Silence makes the audience question what to fear.
- Their interplay controls emotional rhythm.
🡒 Williams’ score, like Bernard Herrmann’s in Psycho, became part of the film’s identity—an audible signal of dread.
The Famous “Dolly Zoom” Shot
In one of the film’s most quoted shots, Brody watches in horror as he realizes a shark has attacked a swimmer. The background recedes while the camera zooms in—a technique known as the “dolly zoom” or “Vertigo shot” (pioneered by Hitchcock).
How it works:
- The camera dollies back while zooming in on Brody’s face.
- This creates a visual distortion, echoing internal panic and emotional collapse.
It turns subjective fear into visual form literally altering space to match mental shock.
This shot became a visual shorthand in cinema for sudden realization or psychic disturbance and is often imitated (Goodfellas, Lord of the Rings, Ringu).
Character-Driven Suspense
Jaws doesn’t rely solely on terror—it’s grounded in dynamic characters. The trio of Brody, Hooper, and Quint is archetypal yet richly developed.
- Brody: The everyman, fearful of water, representing responsibility and reason.
- Hooper: The intellectual, with humor and idealism.
- Quint: The Ahab figure, hardened, obsessed, haunted by past trauma (USS Indianapolis speech).
The shark is the threat, but the human tension is the engine.
Their interplay, particularly aboard the Orca, turns the final act into a study of masculinity, trauma, and camaraderie under pressure.
Technical Innovations and Lessons for Filmmakers
- Editing (Verna Fields): Masterclass in timing and rhythm, building tension and then releasing it, like breathing.
- Cinematography (Bill Butler): Use of water-level shots creates a sense of vulnerability; the ocean becomes a character.
- Production Design: The everyday setting (a small town beach) amplifies the intrusion of the irrational, a classic uncanny device.
The entire film is a play in contrasts: safety vs. threat, seen vs. unseen, order vs. chaos.
Cultural Legacy
- Launched Spielberg’s career and redefined what a director could achieve in commercial cinema.
- Inspired a wave of imitators, yet none matched its narrative control or formal rigor.
- Changed release strategies—the “summer blockbuster” was born.
- Cemented the importance of sound and suspense in visual storytelling.
- Continues to influence filmmakers from Christopher Nolan to Jordan Peele.
Why It Matters?
For filmmakers, Jaws is a Rosetta Stone: how to craft suspense, manage limitations, build characters, and leverage sound and space. It’s not just about fear of sharks—it’s about how film creates fear, controls information, and communicates directly with the subconscious.
Jaws changed the movie business. But more importantly, it changed movies themselves.
Recommendations for Further Exploration
- Read: The Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb – behind-the-scenes insights into the troubled production and creative triumphs.
