I first saw Jaws at a matinee screening at an ABC cinema on Tuesday 30th December 1975. One of my younger brothers, who like me had been caught up in the marketing hype, insisted on coming along. I tried to convince my mother that the film would scare him - not so much out of a sense of altruism, but because I preferred seeing films on my own - but she saw through my thinly disguised expressions of concern.
I don't think he was particularly scared or scarred by the film. This might have been down to the fact that, having drunk a jumbo cola, he needed to go to the toilet just as Matt Hooper was getting ready to check out Ben Gardner's boat, and so missed the film's most intense moment when the hapless fisherman's head popped out of the shattered hull. He came back to his seat, puzzled by the fact that I - like the character on screen - seemed to be gasping for breath.
Jaws was given an A certificate in the UK. Before the ratings system was overhauled in the early Eighties, there were four main categories: U, a universal category, was for family films; A was the equivalent of today's PG, and meant that parents may not wish children under the age of 14 to see the film; AA was suitable for those aged 14 and above; and X was suitable only for adults. Like a packet of cigarettes, Jaws carried a health warning on the poster: May Be Too Intense For Younger Children. This legend - which itself was a great marketing ploy - appeared at the bottom of the block of text that listed the production credits in the standard condensed MoviePoster font, and was further heightened by the more aggressive tag line ('The terrifying motion picture from the terrifying No. 1 bestseller.') above the title.
Before James Ferman, Director of the British Board of Film Classification, approved the rating of an A certificate for Jaws, he consulted a psychiatrist, concerned that the film's intensity might give younger children nightmares. "What's so bad about nightmares?" asked the psychiatrist. "It's just kids working through their problems." During Ferman's tenure the number of films that were either cut or banned in the UK fell from 40% to 4%. He gained a reputation for being a liberal and often crossed swords with Mary Whitehouse, Britain's self-appointed guardian of morals, particularly over the rise of the video nasty in the early Eighties. Ferman himself rejected the label and, in an article he wrote for The Independent shortly after he retired, he stated his position. " There is no room for 'libertarians' at the BBFC, since freedom must always be balanced with responsibility. Above all, there is the duty to prevent harm to potential viewers, especially children, as well as harm by such viewers through antisocial influence." Indeed, it was his concern that the images from another Spielberg film might be too disturbing for children that prompted him to demand 24 different cuts before he would grant it an A certificate. The film was Raiders of the Lost Ark.
