Iconic filmmaker Steven Spielberg has said that he thought the Jaws theme was a joke when he first heard it. The now legendary orchestral composition by John Williams played a major role in the ultimate success of Spielberg’s 1975 masterpiece about a killer great white shark that terrorizes a quiet Long Island beach community. The theme’s simplicity seemed at odds with the enormity of the film, but ended up providing a huge and enduring presence.

Having recently turned 90, Williams has enjoyed a career that has spanned decades, creating some of the most instantly recognizable film themes in cinematic history. He is literally a living legend, and though Spielberg first worked with Williams on his 1974 film, Sugarland Express, it was while making Jaws a year later that the two arguably found their connection as creative collaborators. Time and time again, the arrival of Jaws has been pointed to as a landmark moment in American cinema. The film gave rise to the summer blockbuster, paving the way for larger than life films that offered audiences a theme park-esque experience for the senses. While there’s no doubt that Jaws provided audiences with never-before-seen practical effects, there’s also no argument that without Williams’ score, the lingering fear and dread those effects offered just wouldn’t have had the same impact.

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However, upon hearing Williams’ Jaws score for the first time, Spielberg wasn’t initially sold. In fact, as THR reports, the five-time Oscar-winning director originally just thought that Williams was playing a joke on him. The deceptively simple opening chords weren’t quite what Spielberg had in mind for the film, but as time went on and he realized that Williams wasn’t joking around, the theme’s suitability became apparent. As Spielberg explained:

“I expected to hear something kind of weird and melodic, something tonal, but eerie; something of another world, almost like outer space under the water. And what he played me instead, with two fingers on the lower keys, was ‘dun dun, dun dun, dun dun.’ And at first, I began to laugh. He had a great sense of humor, and I thought he was putting me on.”

John Williams composing music

Spielberg also went on to say that Williams’ score became “the signature for the entire movie.” This, of course, is now something of an indisputable fact. Even for those who have never sat through Jaws, Williams’ score instantly evokes imagery of the famed shark film and ranks alongside such iconic horror film themes as Bernard Herrmann’s work on Psycho or even John Carpenter’s Halloween arrangement. In later years, Williams continued to work with Spielberg, creating more memorable compositions for films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park, further solidifying his reputation as one of the greatest film composers of all time.

Today, it’s hard to imagine a time where the Jaws theme didn’t exist or a scenario in which a filmmaker as accomplished as Spielberg could think that it was a joke. But one of the most interesting things about Williams’ score is that despite how big Jaws became and how many films it went on to influence, there remains a subtlety to it. That subtlety proves that no matter how big a films aims to be or ends up becoming, something as essential as its theme can be simple and yet monstrous at the same time. Williams seemed to understand that even in those early days, long before Jaws became the phenomenon that it is today.

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Source: THR

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