A LINGERING AFTERTASTE

Why Jaws works

- CHRIS VOGNAR

On the most basic level Jaws is a movie about a relentless great white shark, terrorising the residents of a US beach community during a Fourth of July weekend.

It was the razor-toothed beast who adorned the onslaught of T-shirts and other merchandise when the film came out 50 years ago, premiering in June 1975 and all but creating what we think of as the modern blockbuster. It was the shark who got the two-note tuba treatment from John Williams' ominous score.

But the new National Geographic documentary Jaws @ 50, now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, makes one thing as clear as a summer day on Amity Island — Jaws is primarily about flawed people, not a scary fish. The real villain is not the shark, who, after all, would be happy to be left alone. (As shark conservation biologist Candace Fields says in the documentary: "The sharks are not infesting the water. The sharks live in the water.")

The bad guy is the avaricious mayor (Murray Hamilton), who insists on keeping the beaches open during peak season rather than shutting down for safety. The three heroes — police chief Brody (Roy Scheider), boat captain Quint (Robert Shaw) and oceanographer Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) — form a carefully drawn triangle, written with a depth that has eluded most post-Jaws spectacles to this day.

For Laurent Bouzereau, the author and filmmaker who directed Jaws @ 50, the human touches were what made Jaws a classic, and what guided a young Steven Spielberg as he turned Peter Benchley's bestselling novel into a runaway hit movie.

"The humanity of Steven's approach to everything in his career started emerging in a movie like Jaws, where it's much more about people's reaction to a crisis rather than the crisis itself," Bouzereau said in a video interview. "You feel like you know these people, and they all stand out."

You might not peg Cameron Crowe, known for dramatic comedies like Jerry Maguire and