JAWS (1975)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Music: John Williams

An enormous white shark attacks a tourist town and seeds the terror in people. Three men go hunting and get ready to face it.

By Conrado Xalabarder

John Williams has surpassed himself. The soundtrack is a surprising symphonic success and a great step in the revitalization of film music as an essential component in the film. Williams has obtained what Korngold got in The Sea Hawk or Herrmann in Psycho. Simply, he has got our film tenser, dynamic and terrorifier from which I could ever imagine.

Steven Spielberg

1.- A first problem and its solution: The leit-motif

The filming of Jaws was complicated, rough and, specially, very expensive: in a time in which the present technical advances in special effects did not exist, the director had to trust on the efficiency of a machine that simulated being the shark and that constantly spoiled by its contact with the salt of the marine water. Furthermore, Spielberg was afraid that the shark was not sufficiently credible and for that reason he did not dare to show it more than what was strictly necessary, reason why the main protagonist of his terror film would become the great absentee. He felt forced to go to composer John Williams (Long Island, USA. February 8, 1932) in search of help.

In order to make the shark more present it was chosed the use of the leit-motif. The shawk, so that, would be referenced by a leit-motif but not by a musical theme. Its great narrative advantage was its immediacy, since its presence wouldn't be limited by the logical development imposed by a musical theme. If Jaws was going to be sustained in a leit-Motif was indeed by practical reasons: it would be completely nonviable to referenciate it with a theme that would need a time which the film did not have: the shark moved fast and its music should be also quickly. This way, it would not be necessary to show always the monster in screen, because with its leit-motif the shark would be already present, although not physically, which was highly operative.

As being exclusive (since if it is applied to something concrete, it will only be able to referre to that in the successive or otherwise confusion would be caused in the spectator because the reference would be lost) it was not necessary to apply it whenever the shark appeared in screen but the shark appeared, although not visually, when it was applied. It is to say: not because the shark appeared in screen had the leit-motiv to sound, but when the leit-motif was heard, the shark appeared in screen, as a reference.

With its application, then, the monster was more omnipresent. But there was a new problem: if it was used, it would advise of the animal's presence, but hardly could generate another terror than the mere scare. The solution given to this problem, usually the most resorted, was to insert the leit-motif within a series of secondary themes that lodged it to give a greater vigor, without converting it into a theme for that reason. There was only one moment in the film in which the leit-motif would be developed into the form of a theme and it was when it faced, in equality of conditions, to the hunters' theme (in the scene in which the men shoot barrels), becoming in that moment in a countertheme of that theme. Finished the fight, it would return to be a motif and not a theme.

But some new disadvantages had to be solved: as being an exclusive musical reference, unremovable, the leit-motif has a use that always has to be certain. In other words: it is not possible to be used as deceit, since, surpassed the deceit, the spectator will not believe in it again and some confusion would be caused. If in Jaws it were used to confuse the spectator in the sequence of the false shark (when some children terrify the swimmers playing with a plastic fin), from that moment it would not have any effect, since its verosimility would be on doubt. On the contrary, Williams was honest in its use: in the scene of the false shark there is not a single note of music, less of the leit-motif. A tense moment was sacrificed in benefit of the rest of the film. In addition, just ended the sequence, appeared the true shark, the leit-motif was heard and terror returned to the movie.

2.- A second problem and its solution: the dramatic levels

The leit-motif made the shark a more present in screen monster, but not more powerful. In Spielberg's idea was to make that animal vindictive, bloodthirsty and extremely intelligent, reason why it was necessary to find new musical solutions to harness that the fight between men and shark was, in fact, a fight for power, not merely a hunt.

But, How to turn an animal into a so powerful being?. By itself, the leit-motif couldn't be used for that purpose. What it was made, and it was an option of great intelligence, was to establish a double dramatic level in the music of Williams. That way, the soundtrack would run into two different levels, not argumentally but dramatic: on the one hand, music applied for all what was concerned to the sea bottom and, on the other hand, music that would be heard outside the water. The music of the shark and its surroundings as opposed to the one of the humans. It was not made on the basis of a duel between theme/countertheme but on two antagonistic positions in which the most sophisticated and elaborated music (clearly stravinskianesque, refined and cultured) was the one that come from the sea. The strength of that submarine music - including brief arpegios to referenciate the danger of the sea- was opposed with light and deliberately banal melodies that Williams wrote for the outside, in a clear emulation of the enormous power and cleverness of the animal, as opposed to the stupidity and dull heroicity of the humans. To emphasize these differences, he applied a trivial baroque theme that sounded when the tourists arrived in mass at the town (theme that, in some editions of the soundtrack, was titled ironically Tourists On the Menu and in others The Alimentary Canal) and a pastiche of korngolesque music that, with the appearance of describe the feats of the hunters, demonstrated in fact their incompetence and, really, their inferiority as opposed to the shark.

The result would make the shark much bigger.

© Conrado Xalabarder, 2005

Soudtrack list

1. Main Title (01:06) 2. The First Victim (01:43) 3. The Empty Raft (01:15) 4. The Pier Incident (02:19) 5. Father and Son (02:19) 6. The Alimentary Canal (02:02) 7. Ben Gardner's Boat (03:21) 8. Montage (01:31) 9. A Tug On the Line (02:12) 10. Into the Estuary (02:49) 11. Out to Sea (00:56) 12. Man Against Beast (05:15) 13. Quint's Tale (02:30) 14. Brody Panics (01:16) 15. Barrel Off Starboard (01:38) 16. The Great Chase (03:02) 17. Three Barrels Under (02:05) 18. From Bad to Worse (00:53) 19. Quint Thinks Its Over (01:08) 20. The Shark Cage Fugue (02:00) 21. The Shark Approaches (00:42) 22. The Shark Hits the Cage (01:45) 23. Quint Meets His End (01:08) 24. Blown to Bits (03:11) 25. End Title (01:56)