Part of Weekend Classics
Beach goers beware. The residents of Amity Island are washing ashore with pieces missing after late-night swims ahead of the town’s big Fourth of July weekend. Police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close the beach — but Mayor Larry Vaughn and several businessmen won’t hear of losing out on all those sweet tourist dollars. As one might expect, the devilish predator responsible for the beached corpse makes its grand entrance during the weekend’s festivities — and holy cow, who would’ve guessed it’s a massive, shrewd Great White Shark?!? Amid a swarm of hysterical amateur fishermen, it’s up to the ragtag band of Brody, an oceanographer (Richard Dreyfuss) and a grizzled shark hunter (Robert Shaw) to stop the beast by any means necessary. Based on the novel by author Peter Benchley, and sporting one of the most iconic scores of all time by composer John Williams. The film that broke New Hollywood’s auteur model and has since established the blockbuster as king helps us welcome in yet another Nashville July 4th weekend with a big, toothy smile.
“Brilliant young director Steven Spielberg has taken the premise of Peter Benchley's best-selling but rather pedestrian novel “Jaws” — a summer resort community terrorized by the presence of a rogue Great White Shark — and streamlined it into a new classic of cinematic horror and high adventure. The movie version of JAWS is one of the most exciting and satisfying thrillers ever made.” —Gary Arnold, Washington Post (Jun 15, 1975) “If you think about JAWS for more than 45 seconds you will recognize it as nonsense, but it's the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun if you like to have the wits scared out of you at irregular intervals…. Mr. Spielberg has so effectively spaced out the shocks that by the time we reach the spectacular final confrontation between the three men and the great white shark, we totally accept the make-believe on its own foolishly entertaining terms.” —Vincent Canby, New York Times (Jun 21, 1975) “A great adventure movie of the kind we don't get very often any more. It's clean-cut adventure, without the gratuitous violence of so many action pictures. It has the necessary amount of blood and guts to work — but none extra. And it's one hell of a good story, brilliantly told.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1975)
