Indiana Jones is the Great Equalizer - everyone from the most casual movie watcher to the most elite cinema snob will be swept into theaters sometime soon by a wave of nostalgia that’ll leave no man, woman, or child unexposed to Harrison Ford’s face, which some have said is “chiseled out of pure awesomeness.” Especially when he’s wearing the fedora, I’d agree.The first time audiences saw the image of Ford + fedora illuminated before their eyes was a doozy. Raiders opens with a man (whose face we don’t see) being followed through the thick jungles of Peru by some natives he’s enlisted on a quest of some sort. The man, through hand motions and body language has impressed us already as...how to put this...a badass mofo. The natives have no loyalty to the mysterious man and when one of them becomes paranoid about the lethal inhabitants of the jungle, turns mutinous and pulls a gun, there is a crack from a whip and the gun is knocked from his hand. He runs into the jungle in fear, and the mysterious man moves forward from out of the shadows cast by the foliage above.
These first few scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark: the opening credits sequence trek through the jungle, the passage through the nasty booby traps of the Idol’s Temple, the weighing of the satchel of dust next to the golden Idol, which wears a taunting look, as if daring someone to pick it up, the swinging over the pit, shot from a camera angle deep at the bottom of the pit, the boulder, Belloq and the Hovitos, the snake in the airplane; all of these moments were magical for me watching Spielberg’s film for the first time at the age of 9 or 10. And unlike some movie scenes from my youth, watching all of this again now still works that alluring sorcery on me. The iconography has hardly become dated or lost its visceral punch.Spielberg shows an effortless ability for conveying a feeling or an idea through a strong image. You could mute the television and the film would still tell a compelling story simply through the mise en scène, the strategic use of close-ups, medium and establishing shots, and lighting. Lots and lots of striking imagery convey the internal conflicts within the characters and certain moments are framed so that negative space heightens visual tension.
We are offered a motley triumvirate of badguys. There is the ruthless Belloq (Paul Freeman, pictured left), Indy’s rival, who is more passionate about the significance of the Ark itself than the profit it will bring. There is bureaucratic head nazi, Colonel Dietrich (Wolf Kahler, below), who is running the operation and has recruited the veteran archaeologist Belloq to find the Ark,
though Dietrick cares little about the historical or religious significance of the treasure so much as fulfilling his duty to Adolf. And just in case someone finds those villains too bland, there is the additional color of sadistic freak, Toht (Ronald Lacey). Lacey talks like Peter Lorre and looks extremely not Aryan in appearance (when I was 9 or 10 and first saw the film, I thought he was Asian). His character, Toht, has one of the best, most sinister entrances in movie history. Shortly after meeting Karen Allen’s character, the perfectly named Marion Ravenwood, at her bar in Nepal, Toht appears with three henchmen behind him.
After Marion is testy about handing over what he wants, the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, she finds herself being restrained and Toht standing in front of her with no intention of persuading her with his charming personality.
I think Karen Allen is pretty great as Marion. As soon as the frightening Toht and his burly thugs enter her bar and he starts giving orders, she tells him he can take his orders and shove them up his gummy hole. She’s got balls, I guess is what I’m saying, and just when you get a little irritated with her cockiness, it’ll get her in trouble and she’ll suddenly become quite amusing. For example, after Indy leaves her tied up in Belloq’s tent, she bumps into him later, literally, as she’s thrown down into the Well of Souls by the Nazis. Indy catches her and she smacks him and pushes him away, “Get your hands off of me you traitor!” and turns to see that the ground is covered with snakes. She leaps onto Indy’s back, climbing all over him, struggling to get off the ground, screaming about the snakes. 
Another example would be when a Nazi shoves her into a wall, and she pokes her finger hard into his chest and commands, “Don’t. You. Touch. Me.” And then the Nazi shoves her down the hallway. These are the moments that endear her to us. She's never on the sidelines during the action either - when Indy's got his hands full with a big bald Nazi on the airstrip...
...she clobbers the pilot of one of the planes when he’s got his pistol pointed at the back of Indy’s head. 
When she sees a truckful of Nazis on their way over, she doesn't hesitate to use the plane's machineguns to mow them down. 
This extended set piece on the Nazi airstrip immediately followed the suspense and escape from the sealed snake pit, and just when a 1981 audience was probably feeling its adrenaline rush starting to subside, Spielberg hits them not two minutes later with the truck chase. 
In 2008, the truck chase sequence is not as impressive, but I doubt there had been a more intense, protracted action sequence in cinema up to that date when the film first opened. Even Spielberg detractors have to admit that the man knows how to shoot a spectacular action scene. The trilogy is full of violent chases in every vehicle imaginable: truck, mine car, boat, plane, tank, horse. Some directors confuse rapid editing and incoherence with excitement but with Spielberg, you always know who is where in relation to what and he gives the viewer ample time to register what he's seeing, and isn't reluctant to show repeated establishing shots. Ultimately the reason Raiders of the Lost Ark became so influential was because it broke ground on how an adventure film could be paced. Watching Raiders for adult cinemagoers in 1981 was akin to seeing North by Northwest opening with Mount Rushmore rather than ending with it.
Grade: A
Coming Soon: A review of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
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