This series is dedicated to matching memorable movies with the signature day each year upon which I could watch them forever. When I was in college, I started school each year around the third week of September. I wanted to be Indiana Jones. The third Monday of August in 1936 was the 21st, and so…
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Paramount/Lucasfilm, Steven Spielberg)
This places the film right at the end of summer. It's still warm and bright in the northern hemisphere, but days are getting shorter and darker. The plot of the film, and even each sequence, generally starts on a warmer or brighter note and gradually becomes darker in tone, and the heroes have less and less time to forestall their doom. The movie is shot in glowing tones that have a touch of age which gives it a slightly antique look. Raiders feels like it perpetually lives in a late summer afternoon, and I think it's best viewed at that time, with the blinds mostly drawn to create that long, dusty shadow effect on the adjacent walls.
Indiana Jones easily has the most iconic look and sound of any character in film history. The fedora. The leather jacket. The bullwhip. The five-o'clock shadow. Harrison Ford's lop-sided grin. The John Williams theme ("Raiders March"). Even the sound of the punches! Nothing else checks that many boxes. Indy is born fully and wonderfully from the landscape of this film. And while he was inspired by James Bond and the Republic adventure serials of the 1930s and 40s, it's easy to see how there are no other characters (only poor imitators) like him!
The reason for the fertility idol's placement and the giant rolling boulder trap make almost no sense, but they are perfect expressions of pulp fiction adventure storytelling, and you have to lean into that. (Subsequently, if you lean into that enough, all the events that the characters experience in the later films—from hand-plucked out hearts, to fighter planes skating through tunnels, and nuked fridges, etc.—are all easily digestible pieces of pop culture.) Sometimes life doesn't make a lot of sense either, but if we face it with the same level of pluck and tenacity that Indy does, we can do a lot worse!
How dare you, Satipo! Had he not betrayed Indy and helped him escape the temple, it's interesting to think how the Belloq scene would have played out. He was probably doomed either way. Had Satipo been there beside Indy when Belloq took the idol, they probably both would have died stumbling over each other. So, in fact, thank you, Satipo!
This very much is an adult-oriented film, whereas Star Wars was more marketed for youth. Both approaches are valid, and both audiences can enjoy the other, but the "talky" parts of Raiders are more mysterious, cerebral, and plot-driven, seeding for events to come. For example, the whole conversation at Marshall College with the government agents and the history and significance of the Ark is key to the movie's central plot. You might think it's a boring exposition scene, but when you actually listen to how the characters speak and the weight of what they're suggesting (i.e., a doomsday scenario if Hitler gets ahold of the MacGuffin!) is quite compelling.
Major Toht is a super underrated villain. Very methodical. Very scary. At times a bit funny. Great voice and delivery by Ronald Lacey.
It's interesting how the Pam Am Clipper Indy takes from the US to Nepal departs from San Francisco. Historically, that's accurate. But I guess Indy must have taken another plane or train across country to the Pacific Coast, because his academic activities are all based out of New Jersey. Also, the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't complete in 1936. Goes to show: You don't have to get everything right to make a classic piece of Americana.
I am not at all bothered or convinced by the woke claims of recent that Indy is some kind of sexual predator or is an "old world" misogynist. Did he have an "inappropriate" relationship with an underage girl—Marion—when they were younger and dumber? Seems highly probable. Did either of them think it was a bad idea, or that they were doing something wrong at the time? Almost certainly not! "You knew what you were doing," Indy tells her, a bit dismissively. Sure, Marion is hurt. She had her heart broken. That's understandable and wholly valid. And completely believable and human. For both of them. Heroes can make mistakes. Indy sometimes makes a lot of them. And that's a small part of why we love him.
John Rhys-Davies's Sallah is one of the most wholesome and heartening sidekick characters to appear on film. The opening scene on Sallah's veranda overlooking Cairo is such a departure from the cold, dark confines of Marion's bar environs in Nepal, and these scenes really help to illustrate the globetrotting tone of the Indy movies.
Indy's "boss fight" with the sword-wielding Arab is one of the most inspired action encounters in movie-making history. It's a laugh out loud moment if you've never seen it, and perfectly encapsulates "don't bring a knife to a gun fight" without making our hero seem like a cold-blooded killer.
Indy's sorrowful chat with Belloq at the bar is a superb example of how to stage a confrontation without any shots fired or punches thrown. Neither man will concede to the other, and the scene ends in a stalemate (luckily for Indy). Gotta love Indy's line: "You want to talk to God? Let's go see Him together. I've got nothing better to do!"
This line creates a very interesting question in the mind of the discerning viewer. Does Indy believe in God? There is evidence enough in all the films to suggest he may or he may not. I personally think he does, but he wrestles with the idea throughout his life, and in Raiders, he clearly shows a more agnostic approach. Before departing on the adventure, Indy assures Brody that he is not a superstitious fellow, suggesting that he doesn't put a lot of stock into the Biblical lore behind the Ark. This is more bravado than careful thought, on Indy's part. By the end of the third movie, Indy has reconnected more fully with his faith, not surprising given he was raised by a God-fearing father.
That bastard Capuchin monkey got everything that was coming to it when Indy and Sallah visit the old man to decipher the medallion. (Monkeys, next to cats, are some of the most bastardly animals that are also generally regarded as cute and cuddly on the face of the earth!)
There are Bond girls, and then there are Indy girls. To date, Karen Allen's Marion is the best Indy girl. She's tough but cute, full of salt but capable of being sweet, and her chemistry and backstory with Jones makes her the perfect combination of sidekick and damsel-in-distress. Take the drinking scene between Marion and Belloq, for example. It is one of the best comedic scenes in the whole series. It fits perfectly with their characters and there's plenty of motivation for both of them to do what they do in the scene. Toht's whole "three-section nunchaku" which actually turns out to be his coat hanger bit always lands.
The special effects in the Map Room scene are perfect. Amazing that this movie was made years before the advent of computer-generated effects in film.
The entire action sequence from escaping the Well of the Souls, to battling the bald mechanic on the German wing's tarmac, to commandeering the army truck on horseback, to surviving being thrown through the windshield and sliding back under the truck to retake it is easily one of the greatest action sequences. Of. All. Time. One of these days I'm going to make a Youtube video breaking that action sequence down in RPG terms, detailing a round-by-round analysis of the dice rolls and the damage dealt throughout the whole set of scenes. It would be so worthy of that. One of these days.
"It's not the years, it's the mileage." I often use this line myself in real life. Classic.
During the scene when the German U-boat prepares to depart and submerge, I always used to think that the officer in the white hat and the straight black collar who comes into frame near the beginning was Indy. In the novelization (a deleted scene in the film), it explains how Indy clings to the conning tower when the U-boat submerges, and that's why he arrives still wet and without having alerted any of the German sailors during the short voyage. He had to have been holding on for a few hours, at least. If you buy everything else that's happened up till that point of the movie, this part is easy. Besides, it's true that U-boats didn't dive very deep during operations, especially when searching for land by periscope.
I love the exchange between Captain Katanga and his crew member after Belloq and the Nazis make off with Marion and the Ark:
"Can't find Mr. Jones, Captain. I've looked everywhere."
"He's got to be here somewhere. Look again."
"I found him."
"Where?"
"There!"
That's action script poetry. And then the music swells! So. Damn. Heroic.
I love the symmetry in Indy's journey throughout the story. Belloq steals a golden artifact Indy found in Peru at the beginning of Raiders; Indy loses a golden artifact to Belloq outside of Cairo later on. And so begins the pattern of Indy acquiring an artifact only to part with it at a critical moment.
You absolutely feel Indy's conflict when he's aiming the bazooka at the Ark near the end. He was never going to go through with it. It was just a desperate ploy to save Marion. Belloq's words to him in that scene are some of the most profound in the whole film. Good writing.
Again, the special effects are second-to-none in Raiders. The swirling spirits when the Ark opens sells even to this day. My kids were fully convinced. This big kid, 40 years on, is still convinced.
Indy basically loses in the end. The bad guys don't really "win," but our hero certainly comes up mostly empty in the final tally, short of having survived to tell the unlikely tale. Except, of course, his relationship with Marion. He wins big there. And so do we the viewers.
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