No other film in the history of cinema has had such a powerful effect on our perception of just how badly a holiday can turn out as Steven Spielberg's Jaws. Ushering in the dawn of the summer blockbuster, it's a film which made millions of people around the world afraid of dipping their toes into the sea, in case a shark lay waiting to tear them to shreds. The opening scene alone, in which a late-night swimmer finds herself tugged back and forth by the powerful great white shark before finally being dragged beneath the waves forever, is in itself a masterclass is tension building structure and editing. But Jaws is full of such moments, and by the climactic final half in which Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) joins a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and shark hunter (Robert Shaw) out on the open ocean, the viewer feels as if they're sat precariously over the waves with the shark's vast jaws lurking underneath. Of course, we all know that the statistical probability of being eaten by a shark is about as low as you can get, the power of a great movie like Jaws is its ability to make us suspend our rationality and better judgement, leaving us to our raw emotions and fear. Spielberg's early masterpiece achieves this like few other movies before or since.
