Why Quentin Tarantino Called This Spielberg Classic "The Greatest Movie Ever Made... But Not The Greatest Film" (What's The Difference Is)

Quentin Tarantino had high praise for Jaws, but there is an interesting distinction he made at the same time. While not his first movie, Jaws launched Steven Spielberg’s directing career with massive acclaim and unparalleled success. While the Jaws franchise that followed was not nearly as successful, the 1975 original is one of the most influential movies of all time and is widely regarded as creating the summer blockbuster movie trend.

Spielberg took a simple shark attack movie about a small beach community being terrorized by a Great White and turned it into a masterpiece. Jaws was an unprecedented commercial success, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time for a period. It was also a critical hit, earning a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. Time has not diminished its legacy at all, with many filmmakers still praising it as a true classic, including Quentin Tarantino.

Tarantino Called Jaws The “Greatest Movie” Ever Made

Quentin Tarantino has never been shy about sharing his own thoughts on movies. Sometimes those opinions can be quite unexpected, as when Tarantino compared the Toy Story movies to the Dollars trilogy as one of the greatest movie franchises of all time. He also finds himself aligning with the mainstream audiences in many cases, such as his praise of Top Gun: Maverick when it was released.

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With Jaws being considered one of the greatest movies of all time by many people, it is not very surprising that Tarantino loved it as well. However, the qualifiers for his praise have piqued the interest of many people. Tarantino shared his thoughts on Jaws, saying (via Cinemablend):

“I think Jaws is the greatest movie ever made. Maybe not the greatest film. But it’s the greatest movie ever made. And then there are other movies that can get in its rarefied air. But as far as a movie, there’s no making it better than Jaws. There’s no ‘better’ than Jaws. It is the best movie ever made. And it shows how badly timed most movies made before Jaws were.”

What’s The Difference Between A Movie & A Film?

The distinction Quentin Tarantino makes in calling Jaws the “greatest movie ever made“, but stopping short of calling it the greatest “film“, is worth exploring more. Some fans might look at it as a somewhat degrading assessment, even comparable to how Martin Scorsese suggested Marvel movies were “not cinema“. However, Tarantino clearly meant it as a compliment and only sees “movies” and “films” as two different approaches to telling a cinematic story.

Jaws and Taxi Driver were each box office hits, each earned Best Picture nominations, and each has remained a hugely influential movie decades later. However, it is hard to say that they are two projects of the same kind.

Like Jaws, Tarantino has also expressed his great love of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, but it is likely that he sees them as being in two separate categories. There is a consideration about the intent of the filmmakers between these two movies. Scorsese was trying to tell a dark and challenging character study of a complex protagonist. Spielberg was trying to elevate the adventure movie into something with genuine thrills, emotions, and characters that would excite audiences.

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Both filmmakers succeeded in these goals. Jaws and Taxi Driver were each box office hits, movies nominiated for Best Picture, and hugely influential films decades later. However, it is hard to say that they are two projects of the same kind. Tarantino helped to further explain this in the same interview by suggesting that Spielberg is drawn to make these crowd-pleasing movies with the same passion that Scorsese would approach making a film like Taxi Driver:

What I meant by that, to one degree or another, is that Spielberg and a lot of his cohorts grew up seeing those kinds of movies in the theater. Henry Levin’s Journey to Center of the Earth, he’s gonna run to go and see that. Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage. He’s going to run and go see it. Gordon Douglas’s Them! He’s going to run and go see. Now… most of them weren’t directed that well. They were assignments given to journeyman directors who did their best with them. That was how we were used to seeing comic book — that kind of movie experience. As opposed to a Spielberg, who was like, ‘No, this is exactly the kind of movie he likes. This is exactly the kind of movies he was put on earth to make. And he’s going to make it, within an inch of his life, as effective as it possibly can be. And, you know, Michael Anderson, isn’t putting that kind of work in Logan’s Run.

It Makes Sense That Tarantino Would Love Jaws

Jaws Came Out During Tarantino’s Formative Movie Fan Years

Despite the fact that Quentin Tarantino’s taste in movies can be surprising at times, it makes perfect sense that he holds Jaws in such high regard. Throughout his career and his many conversations about his love of cinema, Tarantino has repeatedly talked about his love of filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Brian De Palma, while also regarding the movies of the 1970s as the greatest era in Hollywood history.

His book Cinema Speculation operates as a mix between film criticism and an autobiography, with Tarantino reminiscing on his youth when he was exposed to movies in a big way. He explains that he was allowed to watch more mature movies than his friends and that his tastes in movies changed rapidly. However, while the book explores his early love of exploitation movies, there is no chance Tarantino did not watch Jaws, one of the most popular movies of his youth.

Tarantino has even expressed that his approach to making movies is the same thing he is praising Spielberg for. He likes to take certain genres, like a heist movie, war movie, or Western, and elevate them with his own magical touch. It is quite likely that seeing Spielberg achieve this with Jaws served as an early inspiration for Tarantino’s own incredible filmmaking career.