50 years ago, I was 7 years old. My mom and dad went out to see Jaws. My mom has never been the same since: “the music…” To this day, if you just start singing “da-DUH, da-DUH…” she will shudder.

Ever since then, Jaws has been fixed in my mind. Truth be told, I do not remember when I actually first saw it.

42 years ago, I remember my dad taking me to see the sequel of the sequel, Jaws 3-D. By this time even a 15-year-old could see the franchise phoning it in — I almost said, “jumping the shark.” It was obvious that at the very last minute a Hollywood executive had made the decision that Jaws 3  was so bad it had to become Jaws 3-D, and several totally unnecessary scenes filmed in 3-D were spliced in. I will never forget the opening sequence of a man looking in the mirror in 3-D, exaggerating his nose, and some wag in the theatre audience shouting out, “Oh, god, I hope he doesn’t pick it!” This set the tone.

30 years ago, when I was 27, and a Ph.D candidate in New York City, I was assigned a composition course, for which I had to get a large number of unmotivated students of vastly differing abilities — and familiarity with English — to write essays. My textbook contained a play I’d never heard of by the 19th-century Norwegian writer Heinrik Ibsen, famous for A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler. It was called An Enemy of the People.

As I studied up to teach it, it started to feel eerily familiar. A doctor in a spa town discovers a major contamination that threatens public health. He overcomes the risks to his personal reputation and makes his findings public. There is great conflict with his brother, who is a town leader.

It was the establishing scenario of Jaws. Roy Scheider, the police chief, knows he must close the beach, but the mayor of the town is opposed. “Amity is a summer town. We need summer dollars.”

In 1995, we didn’t really have the internet yet, so I thought I was onto something. Ibsen’s presentation of a fundamental moral conflict — the sanctity of life vs. worldly prosperity — reiterated in a sensationalist horror film a century later.

One year ago, The Regent Theatre screened Jaws as a part of its retro-70s series. After 10 years of singing “da-DUH, da-DUH…” to my kids in various scenarios from bathtime to bedtime, I leapt at the opportunity to see Jaws with them on the big screen.

Recall my uncertainty about when I actually saw Jaws for the first time — this may have been my first theatrical viewing.

Both knowing the film and yet bringing new and young viewers with me proved an interesting experience.

I waited with great anticipation for the call to “get out of the water!” That fantastic “dolly zoom” in which the camera both closes in on the police chief and backs away at the same time, bringing you straight into his terrified mind, even as you are outside watching his eyes. And, yes, on the big screen, it really works.

I was worried about the effect of the music on my kids, but this isn’t what got them. One of them, who spent a fair bit of the movie alternating between covering his eyes and then his ears, concluded, “it was the screaming”— not in the audience, but in the movie.

Before going, I was worried about the patience required to appreciate an older movie. The 1970s was the last film era that was comfortable offering uninterrupted minutes without any obvious action: I associate the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky with long, lingering shots of running water. Then there’s Stanley Kubrick’s A Space Odyssey — which, to be honest, is nothing in this respect compared to his Barry Lyndon.

But Steven Spielberg’s pacing is not in the least boring, or at all meandering (as these others can justly be said to be). Like Ibsen’s play, Jaws is carefully plotted. All of the key elements are laid out in the beginning: a first-time viewer wouldn’t notice, would think they were just realistic details, but their echoes in the second half bring the inevitability of the disaster into focus.

The broad-stroke characters work. The conflicted police chief; Richard Dreyfus’s neurotic scientist; Robert Shaw’s grizzled old salt — who must die. This is part of the morality play inherited from Ibsen, but the film moves away from Ibsen toward something more like Hemingway (with a good dose, of course, of Moby-Dick). Its strong outlines start to pay off in a different way.

And John Williams’ score, so famously broad-stroked, is truly great. To this day I regret not attending the Toronto Symphony’s live accompaniment of Jaws in 2018 — the promotional email is still in my inbox.

How does a film achieve staying power? Because it asks something of its audience, but not too much. Compared to 21st-century movies, Jaws is compelling, but not that absorbing: it is not afraid to remind you that it is fake. It wears its cinematics on its sleeve (think of the dolly zoom), in a sort of homage to Hitchcock — and has some of its own tricks on display. It flatters your knowledge of the genre while setting you up for surprises.

So, if you’ve seen it, Jaws will not be the same as the last time. And if you haven’t, you’ve got a lot in store!  

The Regent Theatre celebrates the 50th anniversary release with a week-long showing on the big screen August 29 through September 4.