I was on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row the other day, which is one of their cultural arts programmes, as they’d invited me as part of a segment on JAWS. what with the whole 50th thing coming.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00208gp

It was only brief and we were talking about shark movies in general and the legacy of JAWS in that regard what with two summer shark movies being released (Under Paris and Something in the Water).

It made me think of what is the actual legacy of JAWS?

There are probably quite a few TBF, ranging from the impact on the blockbuster as a genre to the marketing and crafting of movies, but I wanted to consider one perhaps less obvious, and personal, either individually or as a group.

As an older JAWS fan I can see how the movie has grown with me over the years and how it resonates with different ages from perspective.

When you’re a kid it’s certainly a horror movie. I was lucky enough (or unlucky at the time) to see JAWS in the cinema, although I hid behind a seat for most of it.

Then, as a teen, it becomes a summer movie, an escapism, something fast consumed with action and heroes and a (literally) explosive ending, a satisfying not too “deep” watch before dinner that gets the adrenaline flowing in a not too intense manner. You enjoy it for its surface and it doesn’t mess you around or cheat you.

Then, as you get older you can see more into it. JAWS grows with you. As an adult you’ve watched thousands of movies by now and you begin to appreciate the crafting of the film, particualy Verna Fields editing, the dialogue and the humour, the characters and their arcs.

To many of us JAWS was the movie where (if we’d grown up with it) we learned to discern movies. Instead of just munching on any old dross they would chuck out for kids we began to notice what made films good or bad.

It was subtle but somehow JAWS pervaded us with its delicate approach and its use of camera and music, of shooting angles, sound, light and composition, enough that we could now see where all this was lacking in other films and subconsciously acknowledge when we saw it in a film, which could have eluded us if we didn’t have this burned in appreciation of JAWS in our psyche.

As I’m writing the film that immediately comes to mind is Marathon Man (which I’ve just looked up was ‘76 and it probably just popped in because of Roy).

Again I would have seen this on the TV as a kid but could immediately tell as I watched that this was a “good” movie. And I can see JAWS in it. Do you know what I mean? You can spot it. I think JAWS did that for us, some of us at least.

In the piece on the radio the presenter, Antonia Quirke who has written a BFI Classics book on JAWS, delighted me when she said how JAWS seems to have always been with her, that she couldn’t remember a time when JAWS wasn’t around. I know what she means. It’s almost like JAWS is always still lurking near every movie you watch, that without even considering it, the shark is still working on us, circling silently. The landlord of film, getting his rent due.