I was watching a documentary, part of Sky Arts exceptional multi-season show The Directors, in which each episode tackles a director and their life, career, hits, and misses. This edition covered Steven Spielberg – season 7, episode 1.
As a Jaws fan, I was paying particularly close attention to the segment about that movie. Then, one of the commentators made a statement. They claimed that the shark being hidden and off-screen for much of the movie was not, in fact, due to the malfunctioning mechanical beast. It was, in fact, a conscious decision by Spielberg.
They went on to say that stories of the shark not working forcing this creative decision on Spielberg are, in fact, wildly exaggerated and have become something of a cinema legend that is, in fact, largely incorrect.
This was something of a shock, as it is an accepted fact of cinematic faith that this was the case. It underpins our understanding of a movie that is close to the top of all of our top ten lists.
Indeed, we know from early storyboards that the shark was to appear in several key scenes. Ben Gardner’s demise was sketched out.
Famously, the shark was also to feature much more prominently in the Alex Kintner attack. We know this from the widely seen images of the attack going wrong, and an original storyboard.
So what exactly is the truth here? Was the commentator wrong?
Apparently not. Production designer Joe Alves has been adamant, too, that these stories involving the non-working shark forcing Spielberg’s hand are incredibly exaggerated.
He maintained on a number of occasions that the decision to not show the shark as much was a deliberate decision by Spielberg to increase the tension, rather than a workaround for the problems with the animatronic. Alves is the man who drew most of these storyboards.
So what is the truth here? Is our accepted version of events around Jaws actually wide of the mark? Or is this post-event revisionism?
What do our Outposters think?