What Bites Beneath: Reflections on the Opening Scene of Jaws at 50
Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the Peter Benchley novel, Jaws is celebrating 50 years. The movie changed the way people looked at movies (and how they looked at the ocean), even how people talked about movies, with this film often credited as being the first “blockbuster,” due to the fact that filmgoers back in 1975, waited in long lines that would wrap around city blocks, in order to get their chance to see the thriller. Once inside, audiences were about to experience something they’d never seen (or heard) before. Within the first seconds and mere minutes into the film, Spielberg and composer John Williams created a significant cultural shift.
At first, the camera takes on the P.O.V. of something swimming underwater in the open ocean, making its way through the tufts of plants and other vegetation. There is a sense that this “something” is scanning and searching. Williams’ ominous orchestral score creates the sonic version of something wicked this way comes. Quickly, the scene cuts from ocean to land, water to fire, in the form of a bonfire on the beach, attended by a group of young people, smoking, drinking, and listening to music. A young man strikes up a conversation with a young woman named Chrissie (played by Susan Backlinie, who delivers an incredible, and unforgettable, performance). She impulsively wants to go skinny-dipping, and she, in silhouette, dives into the Atlantic, while the young man, too drunk to undress, passes out along the shore. She swims along the surface, and at one point, she spins onto her back, and much like a synchronized swimmer, raises one of her legs and points it up perpendicularly to the surface; her leg takes on a shape similar to a shark fin, as she gracefully descends below the surface (a smart nod to foreshadowing).
This is where the film begins to embrace some of the classic elements of the horror genre, which usually entails a young woman, now in a vulnerable state of undress, becoming the victim of the villain. (The iconic “shower scene” in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film, Psycho is one of the best examples of this formula.) There are two reasons the opening scene of Jaws became an instant (horror) classic:
Fear of the Unknown
The viewer is never shown what is underneath the surface, wreaking havoc, only Chrissie’s terrified, bloodcurdling reaction to it. She is pulled underwater for a brief second, then things quickly escalate as she’s pushed, then thrashed around like a rag doll. The underwater cause (and Spielberg) moves Chrissie directly to the forefront of the frame, as she almost pleads to the audience itself for help, only to suddenly disappear below the surface.
Life After Death
When Chrissie first dives into the ocean, there is a large buoy positioned off in the distance. The scene eventually changes from calm to unexpected chaos once Chrissie’s attack happens. Then, seemingly just as quickly as it started, Spielberg concludes the scene with a return to peace and tranquility, by once again showing the large buoy out in the open ocean, its bell ringing intermittently in the distance, like nothing horrific even happened.
And this is just the beginning, as Jaws continues on with so many other now-iconic scenes, and, of course, one of the most famous lines in film history: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” After 50 years, Jaws’ chilling opening scene still works for what is shown, yet more so, for what isn’t.