Steven Spielberg
Lo Squalo

There would be so much to say about Jaws: the first film that kickstarted the series of bad monster movies, whose script framework later inspired similar films about crocodiles, boas, piranhas, as well as the more renowned Alien, Predator: the slow unveiling of the "other than you" and the mystery surrounding it, the first inexplicable deaths, the explosion of terror, its destruction at the hands of the good guys, and the final transfer like 'he is a monster, but has more heart than us'.

There would also be much to say about the fact that 'this lot of Americans' have spent their existence looking for the enemy at home, sublimating the "red peril" since the times of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for which Jaws could be nothing but yet another disguise of a Bolshevik submarine. Much could be said about the most crooked face of Hollywood, Roy Scheider, who, in terms of expressionless eyes, competes quite a bit with the glassy pupil of the shark he is called to kill. And on the masterful interpretation of the sea wolf, the two (real) shooting stars that pass in the sky during filming, and the most beautiful phrase I have ever heard in a film of this genre: 'we're not hunting him, he's hunting us'. But...

I prefer to watch this little film for what it is and offer a reading from the depths, beginning by saying that indeed, from the Jaws quadrilogy comes a solemn response to the clichés that plague the average Italian male seeking certainties about his sexual performance: namely, increasing the size does not increase the fun. Compared to the fourth but especially the third big fish used in the family saga, hoisted to the size of a whale, the first seems like a herring. But how much more unsettling is its gliding through algae and depths, how much more frightening is the surfacing of its shiny fin. Personally, when they take it out, I always feel a sense of 'no, damn it, has it gotten that damn cylinder again this time?' and the relief you're supposed to feel from seeing the monster die has never taken me. On the contrary, I have always rooted for the beast, and always wanted to see more blood, more torn flesh in its jaws, more terrified screams on the shore.

And that's why every year, when Retequattro broadcasts it in August, I sit on the couch waiting for... Go little shark, eat them all!