‘Jaws’ and Those Two Musical Notes that Changed Hollywood

“Da, duh.”

Two simple notes – E and F – have become synonymous with tension, fear and sharks, representing the primal dread of being stalked by a predator.

And they largely have “Jaws” to thank.

Fifty years ago, Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film – along with its spooky score composed by John Williams – convinced generations of swimmers to think twice before going in the water.

As a scholar of media history and popular culture, I decided to take a deeper dive into the staying power of these two notes and learned about how they’re influenced by 19th-century classical music, Mickey Mouse and Alfred Hitchcock.

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The first summer blockbuster

In 1964, fisherman Frank Mundus killed a 4,500-pound great white shark off Long Island.

After hearing the story, freelance journalist Peter Benchley began pitching a novel based on three men’s attempt to capture a man-eating shark, basing the character of Quint off of Mundus. Doubleday commissioned Benchley to write the novel, and in 1973, Universal Studios producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown purchased the film rights to the novel before it was published. The 26-year-old Spielberg was signed on to be the director.

Tapping into both mythical and real fears regarding great white sharks – including an infamous set of shark attacks along the Jersey Shore in 1916 – Benchley’s 1974 novel became a bestseller. The book was a key part of Universal’s marketing campaign, which began several months before the film’s release.

Starting in the fall of 1974, Zanuck, Brown and Benchley appeared on a number of radio and television programs to simultaneously promote the release of the paperback edition of the novel and the upcoming film. The marketing also included a national television advertising campaign that featured emerging composer Williams’ two-note theme. The plan was for a summer release, which, at the time, was reserved for films with less than stellar reviews.

Films at the time typically were released market by market, preceded by local reviews. However, Universal’s decision to release the film in hundreds of theaters across the country on June 20, 1975, led to huge up-front profits, sparking a 14-week run as the No. 1 film in the U.S.

Many consider “Jaws” the first true summer blockbuster. It catapulted Spielberg to fame and kicked off the director’s long collaboration with Williams, who would go on to earn the second-highest number of Academy Award nominations in history – 54 – behind only Walt Disney’s 59.

The film’s beating heart

Though it’s now considered one of the greatest scores in film history, when Williams proposed the two-note theme, Spielberg initially thought it was a joke.

But Williams had been inspired by 19th and 20th century composers, including Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and especially Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” In the “Jaws” theme, you can hear echoes of the end of Dvorak’s symphony, as well as the sounds of another character-driven musical piece, Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.”

“Peter and the Wolf” and the score from “Jaws” are both prime examples of leitmotifs, or a musical piece that represents a place or character.

The varying pace of the ostinato – a musical motif that repeats itself – elicits intensifying degrees of emotion and fear. This became more integral as Spielberg and the technical team struggled with the malfunctioning pneumatic sharks that they’d nicknamed “Bruce,” after Spielberg’s lawyer.

As a result, the shark does not appear until the 81-minute mark of the 124-minute film. But its presence is felt through Williams’ theme, which some music scholars have theorized evoke the shark’s heartbeat.

Sounds to manipulate emotions

Williams also has Disney to thank for revolutionizing character-driven music in film.

The two don’t just share a brimming trophy case. They also understood how music can heighten emotion and magnify action for audiences.

Although his career started in the silent film era, Disney became a titan of film, and later media, by leveraging sound to establish one of the greatest stars in media history, Mickey Mouse.

When Disney saw “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, he knew that sound would be the future of film.

On Nov. 18, 1928, “Steamboat Willie” premiered at Universal’s Colony Theater in New York City as Disney’s first animated film to incorporate synchronized sound.

Unlike previous attempts to bring sound to film by having record players concurrently play or deploying live musicians to perform in the theater, Disney used technology that recorded sound directly on the film reel.

It wasn’t the first animated film with synchronized sound, but it was a technical improvement to previous attempts at it, and “Steamboat Willie” became an international hit, launching Mickey’s – and Disney’s – career.

The use of music or sound to match the rhythm of the characters on screen became known as “Mickey Mousing.”

“King Kong” in 1933 would deftly deploy Mickey Mousing in a live action film, with music mimicking the giant gorilla’s movements. For example, in one scene, Kong carries away Ann Darrow, who’s played by actress Fay Wray. Composer Max Steiner uses lighter tones to convey Kong’s curiosity as he holds Ann, followed by ominous, faster, tones as Ann escapes and Kong chases after her. In doing so, Steiner encourages viewers to both fear and connect with the beast throughout the film, helping them suspend disbelief and enter a world of fantasy.

Mickey Mousing declined in popularity after World War II. Many filmmakers saw it as juvenile and too simplistic for the evolving and advancing film industry.

When less is more

In spite of this criticism, the technique was still used to score some iconic scenes, like the playing of violins in the shower as Marion Crane is stabbed in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

Spielberg idolized Hitchcock. A young Spielberg was even kicked off the Universal lot after sneaking on to watch the production of Hitchcock’s 1966 film “Torn Curtain.”

Although Hitchcock and Spielberg never met, “Jaws” clearly exhibits the influence of Hitchcock, the “Master of Suspense.” And maybe that’s why Spielberg initially overcame his doubts about using something so simple to represent tension in the thriller.

The use of the two-note motif helped overcome the production issues Spielberg faced directing the first feature length movie to be filmed on the ocean. The malfunctioning animatronic shark forced Spielberg to leverage Williams’ minimalist theme to represent the shark’s ominous presence in spite of the limited appearances by the eponymous predatory star.

As Williams continued his legendary career, he would deploy a similar sonic motif for certain “Star Wars” characters. Each time Darth Vader appeared, the “Imperial March” was played to set the tone for the leader of the dark side.

As movie budgets creep closer to a half-billion dollars, the “Jaws” theme – and the way those two notes manipulate tension – is a reminder that in film, sometimes less can be more.