Jaws film honours cinema’s least cooperative employee
The Jaws film keeps improving with age, partly because its mechanical shark made every shooting day feel like a formal grievance. Fifty years later, the machine has marked the anniversary by declining to work on principle.
Steven Soderbergh has praised Spielberg’s technique and the extraordinary pressure of the production. The shark has praised neither. It remains a large appliance with an ocean based excuse note.
Salt water joins the production team
Operating a pneumatic shark at sea proved brutally difficult. Modern technology has not solved the basic problem. Salt water still arrives on set determined to be the only agent with no interest in the schedule.
The shark’s failures forced Spielberg to suggest danger instead of constantly showing it. Consequently, one of cinema’s greatest suspense films owes part of its power to machinery behaving like a printer five minutes before a deadline.
“Bruce brought tremendous menace between repairs,” said Mavis Fin Sprocket of the Museum of Aquatic Temperament. “His process felt immersive, mainly because he kept sinking.”
The computer shark arrives with notes
Today’s studios have offered a digital replacement. Their version arrives on time, follows every instruction and somehow looks as if it wants to sell broadband before eating anyone.
The original sea, machine and pressure forced choices that no committee would approve in advance. A committee would ask the shark to stop being difficult, then book it for a resilience workshop.
Fifty years on, audiences still fear the unseen shark. The visible shark has stayed behind the camera, refusing to leave its trailer until somebody respects its hydraulics.
Read the real story: The BFI’s interview with Steven Soderbergh about Jaws.
