Tarantino Named Greatest Movie Ever, And It’s Spielberg’s Biggest Regret
Despite its groundbreaking nature, the movie had a real environmental impact (not the good one).
Quentin Tarantino 's obsession with film history is well known. Even before he began his directing career, he worked in a video store and watched several movies a day.
The director still often shares his favorite movies with fans, but do you know which movie he considers to be the greatest of all time? You’d be surprised.
On the ReelBlend podcast, the director admitted that he considers Jaws to be the best movie in history:
“I think Jaws is the greatest movie ever made. Maybe not the greatest film. But it's the greatest movie ever made. […] There’s no 'better' than Jaws. […] And it shows how badly timed most movies made before Jaws were.”
Steven Spielberg 's Jaws, about a great white shark attack on a beach town, was released on June 20, 1975, and that date changed cinematography forever.
The premiere of Jaws was almost a national event, involving everyone who saw the ad or heard the opening orchestral bars of the iconic soundtrack.
The film's music won one of three Academy Awards, the other two being for editing and sound. Jaws was also nominated for Best Picture, but lost to Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
But Spielberg's blockbuster easily outperformed Forman's film and other competitors at the box office, becoming the first American movie to gross more than $235 million, with a final total of $470 million.
Spielberg did admit, however, that he regretted the consequences of the cult movie he created:
“I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really truly regret that.”
Peter Benchley, author of the 1974 book on which Spielberg's blockbuster is based, has also publicly apologized for his role in the sharp decline of the shark population.
Studies have shown that since the movie's release, the number of sharks along the East Coast of North America has dropped by 50%. According to experts, Spielberg's horror distorted people's perceptions: they began to see sharks as vengeful animals bent on killing humans.
Sources: ReelBlend Podcast, BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs