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'Jaws' changed movies forever, but Hollywood could still learn from it

Fifty years after “Jaws” sunk its teeth into us, we’re still admiring the bite mark. Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film, his second feature, left such a imprint on culture and Hollywood that barely any trip to the movies, let alone to the beach, hasn’t been the same since.

Few films have been more perfectly suited to their time and place than “Jaws,” which half a century ago unspooled across the country in a then-novel wide release accompanied by Universal Pictures’ opening-weekend publicity blitz. “It supercharged the language of cinema,” the filmmaker Robert Zemeckis says in the upcoming documentary “Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story,” premiering July 10 on National Geographic. That’s partially why you have to almost remind yourself that the movie has only three main characters in Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and Quint (Robert Shaw).

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