When the summer of 1975 cracked open its jaws — on June 20, to be exact — a 27-year-old Steven Spielberg gave us a perfect monster: sleek, unstoppable and so deeply American it practically had a mortgage. “Jaws” remains the standard by which I measure a popcorn movie’s power to thrill. Half a century later, John Williams’ two-note theme still gives me the gooseflesh I felt at 16, when a lazy Sunday matinee turned into a saltwater Greek tragedy about fear and appetite.

“Jaws” made a lot of people fall in love with movies. But it also made America fall in love with a different idea of movies — bigger, louder, simpler — in ways that changed forever when films come out, how they’re sold, and what stories get funded. When I say “Jaws” is the most important American film since “Gone With the Wind,” I mean it as both praise and a warning to anyone who cares about what the multiplex has become.

Before the shark hit the screen, studios scattered their bets year-round. A prestige drama might appear in March, a racy comedy in August, a grand musical at Thanksgiving. Sure, holiday blockbusters existed — “Ben-Hur” and “The Sound of Music” played for months — but summer was a cinematic backwater, a season for drive-in schlock and cheap double features, not for tent poles devouring records.

Then came Spielberg’s $9 million thriller, filmed under duress on Martha’s Vineyard with a mechanical shark that barely worked. Universal’s innovation wasn’t just the movie itself but how they sold it: saturation TV ads nationwide and an unheard-of wide release on 464 screens. People lined up around the block for months. By year’s end, “Jaws” had grossed $123 million in North America alone — about $700 million today — and the blockbuster era was born.

Almost overnight, the movie calendar hardened into something nearly sacred. From January through April came films with no clear audience: horror cheapies, Oscar leftovers, prestige misfires. May through August became prime real estate for giant tent poles, sequels and superheroes — Hollywood’s fiscal harvest season.........

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