We saw the 50th anniversary re-release of Jaws this weekend, one of my all time favourite movies, and one that had a profound impact on me as a kid. It is a 4K remaster being shown in IMAX, so probably the first time I've seen it in a cinema since, well, the first time, in 1975.
I would have been eight years old at the time, and I have no idea what my dad was thinking when he brought me. I think I wanted to go and may have asked him? Or perhaps he was going anyways and asked if I wanted to come. I know many people in my 4th grade class were two scared to go, and rumours of people becoming physically ill in Leduc's Gaiety Theatre were rampant (and likely apocryphal).
I had planned to put an empty popcorn tub over my head if things got too intense, but a a stern look from Dad dissuaded me, so I watched the film in its entirety. I remember being disgusted at the severed leg settling to the bottom of the estuary, but it wasn't the gore that stuck with me - it was the intensity.
No bad dreams followed me out of the theatre, but a momentary fascination with marine biology did, along with a passion for movies that Star Wars cemented into polace two years later.
I revisited the movie with my kids years later and it was Glory's appreciation of it that reminded me what an awesome film this throwaway monster movie truly is.
Since then I have shown it to many people for their first time, and although many will comment on how Bruce the mechanical shark (named after Spielberg's lawyer) doesn't hold as much water these days, especially 30+ years after Jurassic Park, everyone comes away with at least a little apprehension about open water.
I had watched the Jaws at 50 Documentary on Disney+ only a week before, and had learned even more about the troubled film production than I had from my reading and all the special features on DVD and BluRay. I knew Spielberg had run way over time and even more over budget on the film, but I did not know that the responsibility he held for this, and for all the people depending on him, took such a toll on him personally.
Seeing the film in IMAX was a great experience - it made the shooting star that Spielberg puts in every movie much easier to find and for the first time I noticed that when Chief Brody takes a glass of whatever homebrew Quint has served him and hands it off to Hooper while saying "don't drink that," Hooper drinks it anyways - I think I am usually too enthralled by the interaction between Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw.
Shaw, in particular, is one reason that Jaws doesn't need an IMAX screen to be impactful. His telling of the fate of the USS Indianapolis during WWII is just as captivating on a 14" b&w tube TV late at night as it is in this 4K restoration.
And while our matinee showing wasn't sold out, I still found it a little gratifying to discover that this half-century-old film that the director thought would be his very last movie, actually beat two new releases at the box office.
Jaws is a great story, brilliantly shot and acted, and for the time, Bruce was a very credible stand-in (despite corroding almost immediately due to his being designed for freshwater, not salt). And the story about the story is almost as good - the challenges of shooting on water, the use of the natives of Martha's Vineyard as not only extras but speaking roles. I expect I will see it a few more times in my life, hopefully introducing a few new people to it along the way.
But watching it in the water, like they've done at Sylvan Lake a few times? Not a chance.
