Jaws: Chrissie and the legacy of the most famous killer of the seas

We all know what happened with Jaws (1975): it crushed the box office, catapulted Steven Spielberg's career, brought prestige to the horror genre, sparked fear in millions of swimmers around the world, and became the golden standard for shark movies, one that may be imitated a thousand times but never equaled.

But there is something that sets Jaws apart from other classics, not only in horror but in cinema in general, and that is that it starts off perfectly. Just watch the first five minutes to see how the tone of the film is established, drawing you in and making you want to see more. And that's despite the fact that the film has some slow parts, but the way suspense and tension are handled in the opening scenes makes it impossible to take your eyes off the screen from that moment on.

Jaws follows a series of deadly attacks on a New England beach carried out by a large white shark. The officer in charge must find a way to deal with the threat while the shark continues to terrorize the waters, leaving a trail of corpses in its wake. However, there was one victim who turned this film into a legend of popular culture.

A beautiful martyr

Chrissie is not a name you´ll remember unless you have seen the film a hundred times and are a fan who pays attention to detail. However, what all generations who have seen it will remember is her role in the film, as it was the first victim of the monstrous shark. That beautiful young woman who went swimming at the wrong time and wrong place.

The scene lasts five minutes, but it's not just during that time that we are shown an attack of unknown origin (the shark is not yet revealed), but we are also introduced to the protagonist of the opening scene of Jaws. Chrissie is attractive, flirtatious, and, judging by how she is positioned on the beach, a free spirit. She camps separately from the group of young people, feeling comfortable on her own, but she still catches the attention of a boy, who obviously sees an opportunity to flirt with her.

The first few minutes are innocent in the sense that they draw us into the interaction between these two characters, a very timely distraction, and we let our guard down to see if the boy can catch Chrissie. That brief race fraught with sexual tension between two young people who don't know each other but know what they want at that precise moment changes course when she wants her new acquaintance to follow her to the sea. There, we´ll see the true tone of this film.

Anatomy of a Hunt

Chrissie adds spice to the situation by undressing and swimming out into the open ocean, challenging her admirer to follow her. What she doesn't know is that he's not the only one watching her. Deep below, something is watching her with a sense of stealthy stalking and a voracious appetite.

The whole scene is remarkably well done, but the underwater camera angles that show Chrissie's body, first swimming and then floating on the surface of the water, are a work of art. You can literally see through the eyes of the thing that will kill her. Special mention should also be made of the soft background music that gradually foreshadows the attack on the swimmer.

What followed was pure, primitive terror. Chrissie feels something brush against her, then she is violently shaken in the water. Her attacker is not visible, but her reaction of fear, helplessness, and desperation speaks volumes about what the shark is capable of. The poor young woman is facing an unknown danger, alone.

And what about the admirer who was chasing her? Exhaustion from the chase and alcohol left him behind, unconscious on the sand. The truth is that in her desperate struggle to survive, Chrissie doesn't call him, or the coast guard. She calls no one but God, because she knows that no man can stand up to the creature that is attacking her, like a kind of battle between good and evil where a demon from the depths is trying to take this woman's life.

The girl's last-ditch effort to save her life is to hold onto a buoy, but it is all in vain against the brute force and savagery of the shark, which finishes off its prey by dragging her into the depths. The music ends and the sea returns to calm, but now there is an uncomfortable silence because we have witnessed someone die, and then when they disappear, it is as if they had never been there.

The remains of poor Chrissie are left on the beach to feed the crabs and serve as a silent witness to the bloody brutality that is the unusual threat that Chief Brody and company will face in order to make the beach safe again.

The scene has gone down in history because of Steven Spielberg's enormous effort to emulate masters of staging such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, but now looking at the throne of suspense with different eyes, he saw himself sitting on it, creating the perfect initial horror sequence. Jaws was a film with a simple plot: a shark appeared on a populated coastline and had to be stopped. But beneath that simplicity, it delivered a work of art and technical mastery, ahead of its time, all starting with the exquisite and chilling opening scene.

The woman behind the swimmer

But we mustn't take anything away from the star of those first five minutes. Susan Backlinie ensured that a film about a killer fish went down in history with the great performance she showed during the brief time Spielberg gave her to shine on screen. The impression she made was so strong that her death on screen was truly mourned, and it probably influenced the entertaining but inferior sequel, Jaws 2, to feature more young characters like Chrissie in the plot.

Susan Backlinie's career was surprisingly short considering the monumental hit that Jaws was and the enormous significance that her single scene in the film had on the collective imagination. I recommend that you look up the short interview she gave to Inside Edition (“Jaws' Scream Queen Recalls Role”, thank me later) where the actress offered a retrospective on her legendary role in this horror classic, and even defying the fears that motivated fans to stay away from the water, she presented the boat where she lived with her husband, as if challenging any shark to scare her. The interview itself evokes a sense of nostalgia among film buffs just by remembering the fact that Backlinie passed away in 2024.

Chrissie disappeared into the sea, but no shark can take away the eternal place she earned in pop culture.