East coast seaside town Amity is rocked by an unwelcome summer visitor, a great white shark with a taste for raw human flesh. Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beaches until the predator has been eliminated, but the mayor has other priorities and overrules him. Eventually Brody is compelled to go fishing with great white hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) and ichthyologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) for a showdown with the implacable monster.
Hollywood’s first summer blockbuster was probably the most finely tuned thriller since Hitchcock’s Psycho. Scary enough to make audiences wary of swimming, its spare, lean storytelling style also lent itself to myriad critical interpretations. Certainly it established Steven Spielberg as the preeminent commerical filmmaker of the era and redefined the way American movies were promoted and released for deccades to come.
Steven Spielberg
Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Murray Hamilton, Lorraine Gary
USA
1975
English
Violence
Open to youth!
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Credits
Producer
David Brown, Richard D. Zanuck
Screenwriter
Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Cinematography
Bill Butler
Editor
Verna Fields
Original Music
John Williams
Production Design
Joe Alves
Also in This Series: Spielberg for Beginners
Savour seven of Spielberg’s hits and family favourites on the big screen this spring break.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
One of only a handful of live action children's films to capture the imaginations of generations, E.T. has a luminous warmth; it's a suburban symphony of emotion, and it's fascinating to revisit it in the light of The Fabelmans.
The Adventures of Tintin
Could this be Spielberg's most underrated film? It's his only stab at animation, and it moves like Raiders of the Lost Ark on caffeine. The plotting may be antiquarian but the action never lets up. It's delirious stuff, often laugh-out-loud funny.
The Fabelmans
Nominated for 7 Academy Awards, Steven Spielberg's bittersweet movie memoir is a portrait of the artist as the product of his artsy mom (Michelle Williams), his techy dad (Paul Dano), and a broken home.
Jurassic Park
Two paleontologists are invited to preview a new Central American theme park by an avuncular entrepreneur (Richard Attenborough). What they encounter is truly a walk on the wild side. Spielberg's jaw dropping adventure movie still kills on the big screen.