Film critic Thom Ernst clearly remembers the first time he saw Stephen Spielberg’s trail-blazing blockbuster “Jaws.”
It was June 20, 1975. The Vietnam War was over, U.S. president Richard Nixon had resigned and the Captain & Tennille were cheerfully crooning “Love Will Keep Us Together.”
After years of tumultuous social politics, people were ready for a healthy dose of escapism.
“I was just on my way to Junior Forest Rangers up north and it was the last movie I saw before going out of town,” recalls the 57-year-old Waterloo Region native, who remembers lining up at an uptown Waterloo cinema for the première of the monster film that changed Hollywood.
“For some reason, it appealed to me more than any other movie. I saw it not once, but twice. I walked out of the theatre and got right back in line.
He laughs. “That makes me kind of a goof, I guess.”
“Discriminating filmgoer” is more like it, given that Spielberg’s shark attack thriller is now considered a masterpiece, a cinema landmark that catapulted the 28-year-old maverick into the top rank of directors and ushered in the era of summer blockbusters.
“How many blockbusters do you know where chunks of dialogue are essential to the film?” poses Ernst, who studied English and drama at the University of Waterloo.
” ‘Jaws’ was the first horror film with a real ‘human’ aspect to it.”
That, of course, would be its backstory about a small town police chief who — under intense political pressure — covers up the presence of a great white shark off the town’s tourist-friendly coastline, but lives to regret it when the implacable beast starts chomping down on locals.
The epic battle that ensues, which involves the taciturn chief (Roy Scheider), a know-it-all marine biologist (Richard Dreyfus) and a crusty shark hunter (Robert Shaw), was a modern day version of “Moby Dick.”
“It’s everything a blockbuster should be,” notes Ernst, former host of TVO’s “Saturday Night at the Movies” and current film reviewer on CTV News Channel. “It was a movie that suddenly became a phenomenon.”
Lunch boxes, T-shirts, tumblers, towels, costumes, games, posters, sleepwear, water pistols, and, of course, the novelty hit, “Mr. Jaws,” which peaked at No. 4 on Billboard.
Hell, it even had its own catchphrase: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”
But like any game-changing art form, its birth was not without challenges: the mechanical shark malfunctioned, cast members didn’t get along, the film went way over budget.
Good thing an ambitious young nobody named Spielberg was at the helm to turn what could have been a studio tax writeoff into something approaching high art.
“The audience was enthralled,” recalls Ernst, who will introduce a 40th anniversary screening on Thursday with anecdotes about the film’s troubled gestation.
“They cheered, they laughed, they screamed. It was an emotional roller-coaster. You get completely lost in the film. It’s something I rarely experience now.”
With a “shock and awe” marketing campaign and massive nationwide opening, “Jaws” became not only the highest grossing film of all time — until “Star Wars” two years later — it upended the antiquated notion that high-profile movies could only be released in winter, opened gradually over many weeks.
Good thing? Bad thing?
On one hand, it paved the way for the big budget popcorn movies that dominate today — everything from “Avatar” to “The Avengers” — and inspired current directors like J.J. Abrams and James Cameron.
On the other, it shut out, over time, the nervy, indie-minded button pushers who rejuvenated Hollywood cinema in the ’70s with provocative classics like “The Godfather,” “Chinatown,” “Taxi Driver,” “Clockwork Orange” and “The Conversation.”
Suddenly, bigger was better, high concept was king, and innovation was for elitist eggheads.
The true legacy of “Jaws” isn’t, arguably, arty Oscar winners like “Boyhood” and “Birdman.”
It’s “Sharknado” one through three.
” ‘Sharknado’ was a gas!” laughs Ernst, who figures that whether “Jaws” came along or not, the rate of bad movies to good would be exactly the same. “I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed it.”
But nothing, he insists, compares to the prototype: “the tension, the buildup.”
“Jaws,” fuelled by John William’s haunting, Oscar-winning score, was one for the record books.
And when Ernst finds himself back in a Waterloo theatre on Thursday — possibly with the same audience who congregated 40 years ago — it’ll be the ride of his life all over again.
“I think it still works,” notes the longtime Toronto resident, who plans to attend the screening with a sister who lives in Wellesley.
“We’re maybe a little desensitized to the gore in the film — seeing a severed head with an eye popped out of its socket.
“But ‘Jaws’ proved that monsters don’t have to be unreal. They exist.”
source:guelphmercury.com
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 