Steven Spielberg's breakout movie 'Jaws' premiered in cinemas on the 20th June 1975 became the world's first blockbuster movie grossing a whopping 460 million dollars worldwide after costing only $9 million.
'Jaws' was a simple story about a gigantic white shark which begins to menace the small island community of Amity, and so a police chief (played by Roy Scheider), a marine scientist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a fisherman (Robert Shaw) set out to stop it. Yet it was delivered with great visuals, music and thrilling storytelling which all led to the success of the movie.
At the time 'Jaws' became the highest grossing movie in history, a distinction it held until the release of Star Wars, which celebrated its 35th "May the 4th be with you" recently.
'Jaws' won three Academy Awards for Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound and just barely lost Best Picture to 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', yet not everyone was satisfied - Spielberg didn't even get nominated for Best Director, a fact that he greatly resented (The director later received the Academy award for 'Schindler's List' and 'Saving Private Ryan').
The movie also won the Grammy Award, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, the Golden Globe Award and was chosen Favorite Movie at the People's Choice Awards.
Critics were generally favorable towards 'Jaws' at the time, and since then the general opinion only improved. The film has been cited many times among the greatest movies of all time and in 2001, the United States Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry as a "culturally significant" motion picture.
Three sequels were spawned from 'Jaws', but none of them got close to the success of the first movie, in fact the three films together only grossed for half the amount of the original movie. (It is true that Steven Spielberg didn't direct any of the sequels.)
The shark movie will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year, and for this occasion many theaters worldwide will once again put it on screen. Look out for this movie between the 21st and 24th June this year at selected cinemas.
