When the white shark strikes again

It is almost eight meters long, weighs half a ton and is one of the biggest stars in film history: « Bruce », the mechanical giant fish made of fiberglass and bloodthood star of the horror shock « The White Hai » from 1975. The fearsurizing shark attack, which director Steven Spielberg had named after his lawyer and which is now exhibited in the Oscar Museum in Los Angeles, and is now exhibited in Los Angeles, Back then, millions of spectators healed a paganism all over the world and has become an icon of cinema.

Everyone knows the film poster, on which a huge white shark floating in the sea approaches a huge white shark with torn their mouths, and many remember the very simple but very eerie and only two tones, to which the underwater lung follows its victims.

In the summer, the legendary film celebrates his 50th birthday with Roy Scheider, ARTE recognizes him with the new documentary « The White Hai, Cult Film with Bite », which can be seen on this Sunday, May 4th, as part of a topic on Steven Spielberg and in which many involved from that time.

In the summer of 1975, Spielberg’s shocker « Jaws » (German: Kiefer), as his original name is, was captivated by the spectators, in the year alone, in the year of publication, played $ 260 million on the box office and changed the film landscape forever: With « The White Hai », the era of the elaborately produced Hollywood blockbuster, which mostly inserted with enormous advertising expenses come, inspire the masses and usually have several sequels – so also from works such as « Star Wars », « Indiana Jones » or « Jurassic Park » Kassenschlager, which are no longer an integral part of film history.

Film hit without a star bid

The then just 28-year-old Steven Spielberg, who was to become one of the most successful directors in general, had recognized the signs of the times in the mid-1970s and, with the « Jaws » based on a novel by Peter Benchley, and without one of the then trendy stars landed a veritable hit, which is now celebrated by cineasts as a milestone of the cinema and is timelessly good-the huge white film robbery with the Dead, black eyes has lost none of his horror in five decades.

But the gods set the sweat before the price, and in this case it was too: The filming in the idyllic seaside resort of Martha’s Vineyard on the American east coast was difficult and finally took 159 instead of the planned 65 days, which also became a financial burden for production.

As the Arte documentary shows, bad weather, lousy mood on the set and last but not least the good « bruce » young director Steven Spielberg more than once a thick stroke thwarted: the complicated electronics of the mechanical shark attraction, from which a total of three copies worth $ 250,000 each, made the first use of the huge fish from Fiberglass as well A stone sank into the floods of the Atlantic.

Bruce still failed often, but Steven Spielberg made a virtue out of necessity: he brought the eating monster late in the film in full splendor on the screen and had it operated on in hidden, which did not detect the tension, but, on the contrary, drastically increased – the scenes in which « Bruce » is there, but not to be seen, are the most exciting in Spielberg’s masterpiece.

« The white shark, cult film with bite », Sunday, May 4th, 11pm, Arte