Jaws at 50!

FIFTY YEARS after its release, the movie Jaws still has plenty of bite.

Based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley and directed by Steven Spielberg at the age of 27, Jaws has a great cast, starring Roy Scheider as small-town police chief Martin Brody, Richard Dreyfuss as the marine biologist, and Robert Shaw as the professional shark hunter. It has unforgettable music. Terrific suspense.

And it still has the power to shock, even though audiences know the shark on the screen is a mechanical monster that malfunctioned during the shoot. Some of the most terrifying scenes, such as the killing of the shark’s first victim, never show the shark at all. Not even a fin or a tail. We see a girl being swept back and forth in the water by an invisible predator, and our imagination fills in the rest.

That’s the power of great screen writing and a great director.