Tarantino knows his cinema, that much is for sure. So much of what he does is homage, or plucks things straight out of Hollywood history. So what does he think is the greatest movie ever made? Well, in an interview from quite a while back with ReelBlend he revealed his champion. The tale of an island terrorized by a particularly large, hungry great white shark – Jaws.
In the interview, he said he considers Jaws the Daddy. The movie launched the career of Stephen Spielberg and was nominated for four Oscars, winning three. It invented the summer blockbuster and was the highest grossing movie of all time until Star Wars happened.
However, there is a catch. He said:
“I think Jaws is the greatest movie ever made. Maybe not the greatest film. But it’s the greatest movie ever made. And then there are other movies that can get in its rarefied air. But as far as a movie, there’s no making it better than Jaws. There’s no ‘better’ than Jaws. It is the best movie ever made. And it shows how badly timed most movies made before Jaws were.”
An interesting point that many Outposters could agree with. That there is a discernible difference between a “film” and a “movie”.
Most people use the terms interchangeably, but Tarantino thinks they are two different things. He expanded:
“What I meant by that, to one degree or another, is that Spielberg and a lot of his cohorts grew up seeing those kinds of movies in the theater. Henry Levin’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, he’s gonna run to go and see that. Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage. He’s going to run and go see it. Gordon Douglas’s Them! He’s going to run and go see. Now… most of them weren’t directed that well. They were assignments given to journeyman directors who did their best with them. That was how we were used to seeing comic book — that kind of movie experience. As opposed to a Spielberg, who was like, ‘No, this is exactly the kind of movie he likes. This is exactly the kind of movies he was put on Earth to make. And he’s going to make it, within an inch of his life, as effective as it possibly can be. And, you know, Michael Anderson, isn’t putting that kind of work in Logan’s Run.”
So what do you think? Is there a distinction between the two things? And if you agree with Tarantino that there is, do you also agree Jaws ranks at the top? If not, what does?
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