The lead actors of "Jaws" (from left): Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfus.

Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) fights off the shark in "Jaws."

This is the first in an ongoing, semiregular series of films that I consider essential viewing for movie buffs. I found information for the films from a variety of sources, including documentaries and books and web sources.

Year of release: 1975
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Roy Scheider (Police Chief Martin Brody), Richard Dreyfus (Hooper), Robert Shaw (Quint), Lorraine Gary (Ellen Brody), Murray Hamilton (Mayor Vaughn)

Plot:

When a young girl is found dead off the shore of the small island town Amity just before the 4th of July, Police Chief Brody fears it's the result of a shark attack. He requests the beaches to be closed while they investigate, but the mayor scoffs, fearing what shutting down would do to the local economy, which hinges on its Independence Day profits. When a young boy is attacked in the surf amongst a crowd of swimmers, Brody finally convinces the mayor to hire a shark hunter to kill the shark, with Brody and oceanographer Hooper in tow.

Key Scenes:

The film's opening scene, where the young girl is attacked while swimming at night, shoved around in the water, then finally pulled under.

The shark attack sequence where young Alex Kintner is killed, and a later scene where the shark again terrorizes swimmers.

Hooper and Brody go out to search for the shark, only to find Ben Gardner's capsized boat. Hooper dives in, finds a shark tooth and Gardner's head.

The scar-comparing scene with Brody, Hooper and Quint, and the lead-in to Quint's famous USS Indianapolis monologue.

Behind the Scenes:

The mechanical shark famously rarely worked properly, and hampered the film's production, leading to delays and going far over budget. Both Spielberg and Universal feared the film would be a colossal flop and Spielberg had to fight to keep filming going. The changes in filming that resulted from the shark's malfunctions led to some of the film's more famous shots and is widely considered a happy accident that made the film better.

Spielberg nicknamed the shark "Bruce," after his lawyer. The vegetarian Great White shark in the film "Finding Nemo" was named Bruce in homage to "Jaws."

Author Peter Benchley, who has a cameo in the film as a beach reporter, objected to Spielberg rewriting parts of the film, including the ending, and was thrown off the set at one point.

The film and the novel were loosely based on the famous 1912 Jersey Shore shark attacks, which are referenced in the film.

In later years Benchley came to regret the portrayal of sharks in the film and his novel, which many people believed helped to spur worldwide shark hunting and killing, which has left many species of sharks endangered. He mentioned in interviews that had he known the effect it would have, he never would have written the book.

Real shark footage was used in the scene where Hooper is attacked by the shark inside the shark cage. A real shark was filmed "attacking" a miniature cage, and when it became tangled in a rope holding the cage, it led to some rather spectacular footage that was used in the film.

The scene with Ben Gardner's boat was filmed in a swimming pool.

The character Quint is modeled after Moby Dick's Captain Ahab, and in the book he dies the same way Ahab does, by getting tangled in a harpoon line and being dragged underwater.

In the novel Hooper has a past with Brody's wife, and they have an affair.

Spielberg always uses John Williams' famous score to foreshadow the shark's appearance. He never uses it as a red herring.

When the shark is killed, it is shown onscreen sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and a "roar" is heard in the soundtrack. Spielberg reused this from his film "Duel," which Spielberg says shares common themes with "Jaws" of "a leviathan targeting everyman."

The film's climax, where Brody kills the shark by stuffing a compressed air tank in its mouth, then shooting the tank, causing an explosion, was debunked on an episode of "Mythbusters." The tank did not explode as it did in the film, but rather turned into a missile.

Legacy:

Widely considered the first summer blockbuster, "Jaws" changed the way movies were marketed and released, helping create the summer movie season. On a production budget of $7 million, the film grossed $470 million worldwide.

The "forward tracking, zoom out" shot on the beach (focused on Brody) during the Kintner attack is widely termed "the Jaws Shot."

The film's success led to three increasingly bad sequels. "Jaws 2" was, while inferior to the original, considered a decent film, but "Jaws 3D" and "Jaws the Revenge" are considered two of the lesser sequels in film history. All of the films feature members of the Brody family, though Scheider only appeared in the first two films.

Michael Caine, who co-starred in "Jaws the Revenge," was once asked if he'd seen the film. He quipped "I haven't seen the film, but I saw the house the film built, and it is terrific."