‘Jaws' 50th Anniversary: Spielberg's Hollywood Sea Change

Wall Street Journal

5 hours ago

When John Williams first played the 'Jaws' theme for Steven Spielberg on a piano, the young director thought it was a joke. Da-dunt? That's it? An E and an F? The composer and the filmmaker had worked together only once before—on Mr. Spielberg's debut theatrical feature, 'The Sugarland Express' (1974)—but neither had any way of knowing theirs would be one of the most fruitful artistic partnerships in the history of Hollywood.
Without that theme, built around those two ominous notes that signaled the lurking terror of the shark, 'Jaws' is scarcely conceivable. 'The score was clearly responsible for half the success of the movie,' Mr. Spielberg acknowledged in the 1995 documentary 'The Making of 'Jaws.'' On the 50th anniversary of the film's release on June 20, 1975—which is being marked with a Blu-ray/4K reissue with hours of extras, as well as an NBC broadcast of the film on Friday night featuring an introduction from the director—a few other successes are worth remembering.