I've just watched a great film for the umpteenth time and only just realised how much it owes to a much older classic story. This may simply show how slow I am to see such connections but then who knows ?
The film 'Jaws', based on a novel by Peter Benchley, is, on it's own account, a terrific, scary, semi-horror story. In many respects, it's much better than later 'sequels' as the monster is rarely seen and when it is seen the sightings are swift and partial. This is similar to the approach adopted by Ridley Scott in 'Alien', though the latter is actually vastly superior because of the almost total absence of the monster from the screen. 'Jaws' is scary because the monster strikes unexpectedly and from below and it's a rather unknown quantity.
While the beast is swimming around devouring an assortment of unwary people, Quint, the shark hunter, offers to catch it. The man is clearly a bit demented and certainly fixated on catching and killing large sharks; eventually he falls victim to the beast he is hunting and is eaten by it.
Although the similarities are not total, 'Quint' is, without doubt, 'Captain Ahab' from Herman Melville's novel, 'Moby Dick' and the subsequent film starring Gregory Peck. The two characters who accompany 'Quint' on his final and fatal voyage, 'Martin Brodie' and 'Matt Hooper', are, just as clearly, 'Ishmael', the rather naive sailor, and 'Queequeg', the obsessive harpooner of whales.
I've read reviews that equate the character of 'Quint' with 'Ahab' but none that also see how 'Brodie and 'Hooper' are analogues of 'Ishmael' and 'Queequeg'. It strikes me that Peter Benchley must have read 'Moby Dick', possibly watched the film and then decided that there was a modern updating available. Much of the film of 'Jaws' is simply a modern American tale of very little, but the dénouement owes everything to Herman Melville's brilliant originality and almost nothing to Peter Benchley.
The old ones are nearly always the best.
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