Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
When Dr. Indiana Jones – the tweed-suited professor who just happens to be a celebrated archaeologist – is hired by the government to locate the legendary Ark of the Covenant, he finds himself up against the entire Nazi regime.
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8 films that influenced Raiders of the Lost Ark
What critics say influenced Raiders of the Lost Ark
But there are plenty of other tributes – the iconic opening was inspired by a Scrooge McDuck comic (seriously), the final shot loudly echoes the closing scene of Citizen Kane, and the most beloved single moment (in which an exhausted Indy simply pulls out his gun and shoots an extravagant swordsman) could’ve sat snugly in a Hope and Crosby Road picture.
It is the apotheosis of its genre, the Citizen Kane of pulp action–adventure, definitively summing up all that came before and setting the indelible standard for all that comes after.
Note Spielberg's homage in the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark as the Ark is loaded into a warehouse—a parallel to the final scenes of Welles' masterpiece.
Beyond the notion of the globe-trotting professor-adventure (with an instantly identifiable silhouette superficially patterned after Charlton Heston's adventurer hero in Secret of the Incas), Lucas' concept was to breathe new life into an old theatrical form: the cliffhanger serial, with its roller-coaster structure constantly building to thrilling spills.
Also, while Ford created some brilliantly exciting action sequences for his first Western of the sound era – including an extremely influential chase scene with still awe-inspiring stunt work famously copied in "Raiders of the Lost Ark” – the rest is light on action, but heavy on drama, humor, suspense, and characterization.
And the extended Indian attack scene toward the end, heightened by Yakima Canutt’s famous stuntwork, established a new high-watermark for action moviemaking, echoing in later films for decades (most famously in Indiana Jones’s escapades on the exterior of a Nazi truck in Raiders of the Lost Ark ).
The postmodern heir to North By Northwest...like any deathless classic, Raiders is a perfect marriage of star and material.
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Hollywood's chutzpah whizzkids Spielberg and Lucas team up to bring the audiences who flocked to Star Wars and Close Encounters a replay of the innocent pleasures of Saturday serials, but done at two hours length with a much larger budget than the old cliffhangers could command.
George Lucas, creator of the successful Star Wars saga, and Steven Spielberg, director of the magical Close Encounters of the Third Kind, have collaborated on Raiders of the Lost Ark, one of the best screen entertainments of 1981.
While it offers lovingly elaborate homage to the swashbuckling serials of the past, Raiders of the Lost Ark transcends them as absolutely as Star Wars transcends the exploits of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.
Harrison Ford managed to depict a ruthless space pirate in “Star Wars” and brings that same charisma and enthusiasm to Indiana Jones, a big screen hero who is dashing and cunning, but just as average as anyone else venturing in to his world.
According to modern movie legend, Lucas, who had watched the serials of the thirties and forties on television in the fifties, has long cherished the idea of a hocus-pocus series “following the exploits of an adventurer/archeologist, Indiana Jones,” but he got more interested in his other idea—“Star Wars”—and put “Raiders” aside, for later.
It could be in 1977 when Lucas' Star Wars singlehandedly revived science fiction and solidified the concept of the summer blockbuster.
Like Karen Allen in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Kidder benefitted from the 1970s wave of feminism, which paved the way for female characters who could dominate a scene, even if they were the ones being rescued.
The body count is somewhere on the far side of Dawn of the Dead, but with no sign of Romero's underlying moral seriousness: when a hero is twice given a choice between saving the booty and the woman he loves and chooses the booty both times, I have to wonder what makes him different from the Nazis he's fighting.
(I include, in second place, the chase from " The French Connection ," with " Bullitt " in third.)
"The French Connection" is routinely included, along with " Bullitt ," " Diva " and " Raiders of the Lost Ark ," on the short list of movies with the greatest chase scenes of all time.