CHAPTER 8: HEROES, VILLAINS, AND SIDEKICKS
Steven Awalt: Indiana Jones is introduced as this very imposing masculine figure, but then we see the filmmakers methodically chip away this man-of-action, soldier of fortune facade. Everything goes wrong for Indy inside the temple and we see him progressively revealed as a seat-of-his pants fella who clumsily improvises his way out of trap after trap just to stay alive—and it turns out he is somewhat of a close cousin to Han Solo in this regard. So, casting Ford and playing against expectations while slowly unraveling and in turn revealing the nature of Indiana Jones's suddenly relatable character is something of a master stroke on numerous levels. It's a brilliant deconstruction of the Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lester Dent, Ian Fleming man of brawn, cunning and skill, and I think that sly but loving humor toward and about Indy's character is one of the most significant aspects of the film and the entire Indiana Jones series.
William Kallay: The villains of Belloq and Toht were both charming and conniving at the same time. I loved the interaction of Belloq versus Indy, especially in the bar scene in which Spielberg lets the camera run while Belloq compares himself to Indy.
Lee Pfeiffer: A crime or action film is generally only as good as its main villain and Paul Freeman fit the bill with admiration. He had all the characteristics (I wouldn’t call them “qualities”) of those great cinematic villains. The first requisite is that they should be as intelligent as the hero, and equally charismatic. They must be sophisticated, and it doesn’t hurt if they are also handsome. Freeman’s Belloq met the criteria on every level. He was an inspired choice for the villain and followed in the footsteps of the great “B” movie villain George Zucco, who oozed sophistication.
Mark A. Altman: And for those in the wake of the Capitol insurrection who apparently still need to be reminded, Raiders once again makes it clear Nazis are very, very bad.
William Kallay: Karen Allen was spot-on terrific as Marion Ravenwood and held her ground from the very moment she out drinks a guy in the bar. She didn't take any flak from Indy and yet they made a fantastic screen couple.
Lee Pfeiffer: Today, female action heroes are all the rage. In 1981, however, they were rarities. Marion Ravenwood was intelligent, courageous and self-reliant. It was novel to see a female holding her own in a bar fight back then. It’s only recently that I began to reflect on how important this must have been to girls and young women in those days. There were precious few female action heroes they could fantasize about and dream of emulating. Boys were weaned on such heroes from John Wayne and Clint Eastwood to Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, but tough-as-nails female characters were not common. Karen Allen played the role to perfection.
Zaki Hasan: While today it would be considered pro forma to have an ethnically appropriate actor play the role of Sallah, I never viewed John Rhys-Davies' presence in the role negatively and just took it at face value. For me, it was just nice to have a Mid-Eastern character who was explicitly a good guy. And far from being a mere functionary of our hero, Sallah was essential in Indy's progress toward his goal. While the character was used more for comic relief in the third movie, the foundation established in Raiders allowed the comedy to be one aspect of what ended up being a multi-faceted character, and that's also something I appreciated. Sadly, Rhys-Davies' comments in the years since denigrating Islam and Muslims added an uncomfortable element to his performance when viewed in hindsight, but that takes nothing away from the character of Sallah himself.
CHAPTER 9: MEMORABLE SCENES AND SEQUENCES
John Scoleri: One of the things I love about Raiders is how it moves effortlessly from one exciting set-piece to the next, from start to finish. Picking a favorite scene is extremely difficult, but I can say the one moment that always hits me in the gut—and I can relive it just by listening to the John Williams cue—is when Indy is spotted by the crew of the Bantu Wind as he climbs aboard the German submarine. That reprise of the Raiders theme still gives me goosebumps and never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Peter Krämer: My favorite moment in the film comes towards the end, when the Ark has been opened and it slowly reveals its power. Indy, who started out as a non-believer, and a rather cocky one at that, tells Marion: “shut your eyes.” And then he does the same, showing that he now not only has faith in divine power, but also shows humility in front of it. He is a changed man.
Cliff Stephenson: The amazing thing about the Indiana Jones films is that they’re films constructed out of moments. Learning later that Spielberg, Lucas and Kasdan basically built Raiders out of set-pieces is one of the biggest reasons these films are so re-watchable forty years later. We’re watching brisk, breezy, thrilling moments that are so masterfully connected that the movies just fly by. We go from the mystical magnificence of the Map Room to the digging and discovery of the Well of Souls to the escape from the Well of Souls to the fight at the Flying Wing to the truck chase, and it’s all done via these amazing pivots. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a movie built on pivots. Having said all that…the opening South America scene is incredible because it establishes so much in so little time. Indy’s initial reveal from the shadows is one of the all-time greatest character reveals in cinema history and opening action set-piece with the temple, rolling boulder and escape from the Hovitos is a sequence most other films would have ended with; Raiders starts with it!!! It is Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford introducing one of the greatest fictional characters in history and it is perfect.
William Kallay: The opening sequence in the temple was worth the price of admission.
Eric Zala: My favorite scene used to be the Truck Scene, for its amazing stunts and action. Now, having reunited our [Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation] cast to finally do the Airplane Scene 25 years later—and living it—I now find it my new favorite. One-hundred twenty-eight shots of breathtaking, escalating conflict and excitement. This movie keeps giving, keeps surprising me. I know of no other movie—not certainly one originally envisioned by its director as a B movie—that keeps rewarding my returning to it so.
Zaki Hasan: While the scene with Indy chasing Nazis on horseback as they abscond with the Ark is a strong contender, my favorite scene is Indy’s descent into the Map Room as he awaits the sun hitting the exact right point in the sky to illuminate the location of the Ark. The slowly building tension, highlighted by John Williams’ superb music score, as he tries to divine the Ark’s resting place before the Nazis find him, coupled with look on Ford’s face as the location becomes known, is a master class in scene construction—and all with no dialogue from our main character!—that also underscores his role as an intellectual and explorer first and foremost.
Neil S. Bulk (music editor and soundtrack producer): Growing up, my favorite scene of the film was the desert chase, especially the moment when Indy goes under the truck. I’ve probably watched that sequence more times than any other scene from any other movie. It’s a masterpiece of editing and scoring. However, over the last few years I’ve discovered how much I love the moment where Marion takes control of the machine gun on the flying wing and shoots down a truck full of Nazis. This may now be my favorite moment in the film.
Scott Mantz: My favorite scene has to be the fight between Indy and the thug with the giant sword in Cairo. Of course, we all know how that scene came to be (Harrison Ford had the flu, so he improvised a very quick scene to cut to the chase). But when the crowd parts ways to reveal the giant thug, who starts showing off with twirling around that massive sword, only to have Indy casually take out his gun with an "Oh, hell no!" look on his face and shoots him, everyone in the audience laughed and cheered! It's such a rousing moment in film history! To this very day, when I watch that scene from home, I vividly remember that moment when I saw it in theaters for the first time!
Saul Pincus: So many great moments. It’s hard to pick! I love the opening of the Ark purely as a biblical necromancy, a wicked revenge fantasy; a reminder that no matter the obstacle or antagonist, there’s always a bigger, fiercer fish to contend with. Indy’s mano-a-mano with Pat Roach’s German mechanic under the flying wing is so primal, so filled with bloodlust—but also hilarious because it’s balanced with the concept of Indy not really being up to the task—tricking his way though it until he’s really, really not up for it—then using his wits to win (and vividly, right?). An even more cinematic example of this, for me, is the Map Room sequence, a grand moment of intellectual awakening that proves success is in the details, with Norman Reynolds’ production design, Williams’ score and a brief bit of ILM magic (thanks Richard Edlund!) elegantly rapturing us forward to the next obstacle.
Stephen Danley: Over the years I've come to appreciate Raiders for its proficiency in nearly every facet as an adventure film. Perhaps no scene captures this better than the Desert Chase. From the moment Indy sternly inquires, "Truck? What truck?" to his painful grimacing behind the wheel after emerging very much scathed and temporarily victorious, it is and likely always will be the perfect action sequence.
John Scoleri: After meeting Ralph McQuarrie in 1996, one of the greatest surprises my publishing partner Stan Stice and I had was when Ralph pulled out a sketch that looked oddly familiar. When we asked what it was, he dismissively described it as “the one thing I did for Raiders.” Ralph’s sole contribution to the film was the drawing of the Ark that appears in the bible Indy shows to the government agents early in the film. He drew a few thumbnail sketches and created the final drawing (having guys from the crew at ILM pose in the parking lot as reference for some of the foreground figures). The illustration was transferred to an etched metal plate that was printed and inserted into what Ralph recalled was an actual bible for the insert shots. (Raiders trivia buffs will be interested to know that the finger you see onscreen that traces the energy beam coming out of the ark belonged to ILM matte photography assistant, Craig Barron.) It was mind blowing to discover that Ralph was responsible for that piece of art—a rare instance where his actual work (and not just translations of his concepts) filled the theater screen!
CHAPTER 10: THE COSTUMES AND PRODUCTION DESIGN
Saul Pincus: I always thought John Williams’ theme for Marion was amazing in that more than any other music in film, it took you right back to the 30s—or at least what our impression of that era is. I think Raiders’ production design is note perfect in the same way: it instantly evokes both the period and our impression of that period as experienced through classic black-and-white films. Jim Steranko’s pre-production art might suggest a strong reliance on evoking comic books and graphic novels, but production designer Norman Reynolds and costume designer Deborah Nadoolman temper this a bit, offering a practical take that retains the character of Steranko’s work without making it cartoonish. This balance is why I think Raiders is such an evergreen experience: the world it conjures is a relatable but romantic, genre-infused version of 1936. With his attire, Indy could, for all intents and purposes, fall off a bus and be perfectly at home almost anywhere geographically in that time. Sets like the Map Room evoke the same logic: though theoretically constructed thousands of years earlier, its fictional builders took care to make the map itself as simple and practical as if it might be made of moving, interlocking cogs rather than the inanimate mechanism it is. The craft of dressing clothing and sets with dust (a specialty of British crews of that era, according to Spielberg) is the icing on the cake. The sum of all this is the suggestion of the real that paves the way for the fantastic of the beam of light that pinpoints the Well of the Souls as the genuine resting place of the Ark.
Beverly Gray (author, Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How The Graduate Became the Touchstone of a Generation and Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon…and Beyond): Deborah Nadoolman’s costumes for Indy captured a period look but were fashion-forward enough to spark trends on the street. The essence of the garb was distressed leather, along with a rakish fedora based on a so-called “Australian” model she found in a classic men’s store on London’s Savile Row. Said Nadoolman, “Lowering the crown and shortening the brim suited Harrison’s long face better than anything else I could find on the market.”
Saul Pincus: Raiders is known as a great location picture, but it’s also a textbook example of how to use studio sets to elevate a film. And thanks to Spielberg’s transitions I rarely ever notice the joins. In two hours, for me, there’s just one moment: where night has fallen and Indy’s team clears the sand and removes the stone cover to reveal the Well of the Souls. The wider shots are brief and we’re into close-ups quickly—but it looks obviously studio-bound and with the cloud tank effects, there’s a bit too much suspension of disbelief required, especially as it directly follows the iconic silhouette sunset image shot on location in Tunisia. On the flip side, the scene where Marion is pushed into the Well the following morning has always been a seamless marriage of studio and location (aided enormously by the angle of the sun in the Tunisia material, which lends the sequence an elegant and painterly feel that seems to offset, in a genre sort of way, the brutality of what we’re witnessing).
CHAPTER 11: THE STUNTS
Bruce Scivally: My favorite sequence is the truck chase scene, where Indy does a horse-to-truck transfer, fights soldiers in the cab, gets thrown out, and then traverses underneath and is dragged hanging onto his whip; this one sequence takes all the most famous stunts from decades of Western movies and repackages them into a single breakneck, action-packed sequence.
