Soundbites!

As Steven Spielberg's Jaws celebrates 50 years old, Charlotte Smith explores the vital role played by John Williams's famously unsettling soundtrack

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The setting sun illuminates the rippling waves of a dark and fathomless ocean. A young woman confidently swims out from the shore to where a buoy bobs up and down serenely. 'Come on in the water!' she shouts joyfully to her male companion, who has collapsed drunkenly on the sand, unable to remove his shoes. As the woman treads water, a low, rumbling semitone from E to F starts up in the film's accompanying soundtrack. Gradually, as the camera moves from the depths below towards the woman on the surface, this two-note ostinato, played by basses and cellos, becomes louder, faster and more urgent, until a sudden, shrieking chord sounds, as she's jerked down by an unseen force. As the attack takes place, the soundtrack erupts into violent dissonance - followed by near-total silence, punctuated by the gentle bell of the buoy, as the woman finally disappears beneath the waves.

So begins Jaws, based on the novel by Peter Benchley - the film that made a star of its young director Steven Spielberg and coined the phrase 'blockbuster' upon its release in 1975, 50 years ago this month. Principal shooting on the open seas was notoriously difficult, down in no small part to the movie's mechanical 'star' - the shark that terrorises the small, tight-knit community of the fictional Amity Island. Affectionately named 'Bruce' after Spielberg's lawyer, the model shark (in fact, three prototypes constructed from steel and polyurethane) suffered constant malfunctions, causing shooting to balloon from 55 to 159 days. Thus, one of the most joyously frightening films of all time might have become the ultimate damp squib were it not for its soundtrack, composed by one John Williams.