Jaws resurfaces at the cinema

Ah, Jaws. Spielberg’s beastly, briny masterpiece. Fifty years on and the mere mention still has half of Australia checking beneath their lilo at the beach. There’s something almost Pavlovian about that John Williams score – those two notes, rising inexorably from the dark. You hear them; suddenly the Pacific seems a great deal bigger, and your toes curl away from the drop-off. Was there ever a film that infiltrated the public psyche so efficiently, so permanently, as Jaws?

This is cinema as contact sport. Spielberg, at the ripe age of 27, gave us a grand, old shark’s tale on the surface, but underneath – a study in primal fear, tightrope tension, squeaky human foible, and Freudian subtext. Australia, in 1975, knew a thing or two about menacing shark fins in the shallows. As a kid, the film played as both a warning and a dare. “Stay out of the water,” they said. And, naturally, we’d leg it straight in, fizzing with terror and delight.

That’s the thing with sharks. They embody every lurking anxiety about what lies beneath: ancient, glossy-eyed, perfected by evolution and stunningly indifferent to our loose limbs in their blue kingdom. Spielberg hardly needed to show Bruce – the infamously malfunctioning mechanical shark – for us to fill the gaps with our own worst imaginings. In fact, the less shark, the more myth. The film’s magic is in suggestion, in that eerie dorsal sliding by.

Jaws didn’t just redefine the monster movie; it laid out the blueprint for the modern blockbuster. Lines like “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” have become cultural touchstones, right up there with calling a mate “chief” or wincing at the word “Bondi” on Christmas Day. The alchemy of Roy Scheider’s flinty everyman, Richard Dreyfuss’s nervy scientist, and Robert Shaw’s scene-stealing Ahab – sorry, Quint – lift the whole undertaking into legend.

So why do we keep coming back? Why are we obsessively drawn to sharks on screen, despite – or, let’s be honest, because of – our collective horror at ever meeting one in person? It’s the unknowability, the unstoppable nature, the prickling thrill of being reminded just how tiny we are in the ocean’s scheme. Also, there’s a guilty pleasure in the safety of cinematic fear: you can leap from your seat as the head bobs from the boat, but once the credits roll, it’s Coke and popcorn, not teeth and tendons.

And now, 50 years after audiences emerged from the cinema swearing off surf beaches for a whole two days, Jaws is back. August 28 marks its triumphant, remastered return to cinemas across Australia, reminding us that some monsters never truly die – they just swim in circles, waiting for the perfect summer.

So, whether you’re reliving that first, pulse-quickening watch or introducing a new generation to Spielberg’s salt-stained spectacle, do yourself a favour this week: see it on the biggest screen you can. Just remember – don’t go into the water (not until the credits roll at least).