Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Lawrence Kasdan, George Lucas, Philip Kaufman
Photography: Douglas Slocombe
Music: John Williams
Editors: Michael Kahn, George Lucas
Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Ronald Lacey, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliott, Wolf Kahler, Anthony Higgins, Alfred Molina
As an inevitable fact of life, I've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark a few times (among other things, it's one everybody can watch at get-togethers) and have been toting around a VHS I don't remember acquiring. I have always resisted it a little and the nostalgic 1940s Saturday afternoon serial aesthetic it sports. The element is under willing influence of cowriter George Lucas, who in approximately 1981 could do no wrong. But ultimately Raiders has always struck me as too much about not enough. It's slapstick, it's swashbuckling, it has something for everyone. It's never dull so it is always dull.
I avoided it until it was two years old, at which point I learned a lesson I have had to learn again since, which is that director Steven Spielberg's movies should not be underestimated. They are so expertly made, tuned so uncannily to the audience, that I usually end up sucked into them even somewhat against my will. I ditched the VHS experience this time, opted to pay the $4 to stream it, and found myself greeted by one of the longest and most detailed disclaimer statements I think I've ever seen (and I look at horror movies on the semiregular): "Rated 16+: alcohol use, foul language, frightening scenes, sexual content, smoking, violence." I want to talk about at least a couple of these things—the drinking by Karen Allen's character Marion is insane—but let's start with the frightening scenes.
As an inevitable fact of life, I've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark a few times (among other things, it's one everybody can watch at get-togethers) and have been toting around a VHS I don't remember acquiring. I have always resisted it a little and the nostalgic 1940s Saturday afternoon serial aesthetic it sports. The element is under willing influence of cowriter George Lucas, who in approximately 1981 could do no wrong. But ultimately Raiders has always struck me as too much about not enough. It's slapstick, it's swashbuckling, it has something for everyone. It's never dull so it is always dull.
I avoided it until it was two years old, at which point I learned a lesson I have had to learn again since, which is that director Steven Spielberg's movies should not be underestimated. They are so expertly made, tuned so uncannily to the audience, that I usually end up sucked into them even somewhat against my will. I ditched the VHS experience this time, opted to pay the $4 to stream it, and found myself greeted by one of the longest and most detailed disclaimer statements I think I've ever seen (and I look at horror movies on the semiregular): "Rated 16+: alcohol use, foul language, frightening scenes, sexual content, smoking, violence." I want to talk about at least a couple of these things—the drinking by Karen Allen's character Marion is insane—but let's start with the frightening scenes.
They've lost a lot of their oomph over the years, but they are set up well and can still hit hard, plainly inspired by giallo directors like Lucio Fulci and giallo-adjacent work like the Tombs of the Blind Dead pictures. Spielberg's most common device here is the unexpected encounter with a mummified corpse, accompanied by blood-curdling screams. It's generally not the characters screaming but the sound design, which works well—disorienting. I noticed these scenes in my '80s viewings because they were genuinely scary and alarming and added to all the sensations of the movie. Further evidence of Spielberg's interest in horror cropped up the next summer, with E.T., and even more so with Poltergeist, released the same month, where he more or less seemed to get it out of his system as a bossy producer to nominal director Tobe Hooper.
Obviously the one thing you can say about Raiders is that it never stops trying to provoke sensations—it's scary, it's thrilling, it's funny, it's suspenseful, it's sexy, etc. Marion's hard drinking—in Nepal, of all places, she is seen drinking a man twice her size under the table and when that's over she's back to feisty and sober again almost right away. You can't really make jokes like these about drinking anymore (then again, Bad Moms), but it's evidence of one of the trickiest parts of the movie. Like Cary Grant, it just never takes itself seriously, with endless coy I-was-just-joking switch-ups. There is always some gag to puncture the tension, with Harrison Ford breaking the fourth wall various ways to get the point across.
One such scene, for example, involves an elaborate brawl in a Casablanca-like Arab bazaar. Our hero Indiana Jones (Ford), an archeologist by trade, is trying to save the kidnapped Marion who has been hidden in a basket. Jones races around duking it out with all comers, until one dude steps up in full Arab garb and facial hair with a wicked-looking scimitar, which he flashes about like nunchuks or a Duncan yo-yo. Jones crouches to fight him, then an exasperated look crosses his face, he stands up, pulls a gun, shoots him dead with one shot, and shrugs, as if what're you gonna do?
In theaters it often got a big laugh—at least in the early years, when the gag was still new. The comic timing is still there, but the problem is more how the movie itself feels about these scenes. Raiders of the Lost Ark seems capable at will of ratcheting up to extraordinarily high levels of tension—like the rolling boulder in the famous opening sequence. Something has to release the tension. I suppose Spielberg's instincts are right as usual, at least in terms of the roller-coaster ride, but it starts to feel mechanical to me.
The enduring problem is that thrill rides are generally only good for a few minutes at a time, whereas Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (as it has been rechristened since about 2000 in honor of franchise status) is a feature-length movie that goes on for nearly two full hours. My experience with it, as on my most recent viewing, is that the first hour or so gets to some high points the movie at large never makes good on—not because those later scenes aren't good, notably the opening of the ark, but because I am numbed by then to the assault.
When people say they like movies where you sit down with your popcorn and are entertained for two hours, no muss no fuss, they're talking about the template basically set by this movie. In turn, Raiders of the Lost Ark has roots in the 1940s Saturday afternoon serials—not in those rinky-dink shows themselves, god knows, but in the minds of kids imagining what they could be. George Lucas's ability to access that, fully aided and abetted by Spielberg, is his greatest feat and our greatest curse. They grew up and changed the movie industry into endless Saturday afternoon serials. I appreciate that on some level, all the boffo stunts and such, but more resent it, just as I have always somehow appreciated and resented Raiders of the Lost Ark and all that followed even in its own relatively tidy franchise. This stuff can deliver a big kick but the payoff seems to include emptiness.
Obviously the one thing you can say about Raiders is that it never stops trying to provoke sensations—it's scary, it's thrilling, it's funny, it's suspenseful, it's sexy, etc. Marion's hard drinking—in Nepal, of all places, she is seen drinking a man twice her size under the table and when that's over she's back to feisty and sober again almost right away. You can't really make jokes like these about drinking anymore (then again, Bad Moms), but it's evidence of one of the trickiest parts of the movie. Like Cary Grant, it just never takes itself seriously, with endless coy I-was-just-joking switch-ups. There is always some gag to puncture the tension, with Harrison Ford breaking the fourth wall various ways to get the point across.
One such scene, for example, involves an elaborate brawl in a Casablanca-like Arab bazaar. Our hero Indiana Jones (Ford), an archeologist by trade, is trying to save the kidnapped Marion who has been hidden in a basket. Jones races around duking it out with all comers, until one dude steps up in full Arab garb and facial hair with a wicked-looking scimitar, which he flashes about like nunchuks or a Duncan yo-yo. Jones crouches to fight him, then an exasperated look crosses his face, he stands up, pulls a gun, shoots him dead with one shot, and shrugs, as if what're you gonna do?
In theaters it often got a big laugh—at least in the early years, when the gag was still new. The comic timing is still there, but the problem is more how the movie itself feels about these scenes. Raiders of the Lost Ark seems capable at will of ratcheting up to extraordinarily high levels of tension—like the rolling boulder in the famous opening sequence. Something has to release the tension. I suppose Spielberg's instincts are right as usual, at least in terms of the roller-coaster ride, but it starts to feel mechanical to me.
The enduring problem is that thrill rides are generally only good for a few minutes at a time, whereas Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (as it has been rechristened since about 2000 in honor of franchise status) is a feature-length movie that goes on for nearly two full hours. My experience with it, as on my most recent viewing, is that the first hour or so gets to some high points the movie at large never makes good on—not because those later scenes aren't good, notably the opening of the ark, but because I am numbed by then to the assault.
When people say they like movies where you sit down with your popcorn and are entertained for two hours, no muss no fuss, they're talking about the template basically set by this movie. In turn, Raiders of the Lost Ark has roots in the 1940s Saturday afternoon serials—not in those rinky-dink shows themselves, god knows, but in the minds of kids imagining what they could be. George Lucas's ability to access that, fully aided and abetted by Spielberg, is his greatest feat and our greatest curse. They grew up and changed the movie industry into endless Saturday afternoon serials. I appreciate that on some level, all the boffo stunts and such, but more resent it, just as I have always somehow appreciated and resented Raiders of the Lost Ark and all that followed even in its own relatively tidy franchise. This stuff can deliver a big kick but the payoff seems to include emptiness.
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