Indiana Jones: Finding the Lost Ark

1936 year . In the South American jungle, the archaeologist Indiana Jones overcomes a path filled with dangers and traps in search of a golden idol from an ancient temple. Finding him, he flees from the temple, fleeing a giant stone ball rolling behind him, but at the exit he meets his longtime rival, archaeologist Rene Bellock, who was waiting for him with a group of armed natives. Surrounded by an overwhelming number of enemies, Jones is forced to give the statuette to Bellock, but he manages to escape.

Returning to the institute in which he teaches, Jones meets with two U.S. military intelligence agents who inform him that the Nazis, hunting for ancient occult artifacts, are looking for Abner Ravenwood, a former Indiana mentor. Ravenwood is one of the best experts in the ancient Egyptian city ​​of Tanis , which was excavated by the Nazis and which, according to legend, is the location of the Ark of the Covenant . Agents suspect Ravenwood of aiding the Third Reich, but Jones says the Nazis are looking for Abner because he has a special gold medallion - the tip of Ra’s staff, a key artifact that opens the way to the ark. Indiana himself had a falling out with a teacher in the past, and since then he knows about his whereabouts only by rumors, the last of which came from distant Nepal. When asked by agents about why the Nazis might need the Ark, Johns colleague Marcus Brody replies that, according to legend, the power lurking in the Ark can make invincible any army that carries it in front of itself.

In search of an old mentor, Jones goes to Nepal and meets there with his longtime lover, the daughter of Abner Ravenwood - Marion, who became the owner of a tavern in one of the villages. From her, Indiana learns that Abner is dead, and the medallion went to his daughter. Jones offers a lot of money for the artifact that would help Marion move back to the States, but the girl, offended by Indie for the past, is cunning, saying that the medallion is not with her, and offers to come to her tomorrow. Leaving Marion a small deposit, Jones leaves in confusion, and the girl, meanwhile, takes out the medallion from under her shirt and weighs all the pros and cons: on the one hand, the medallion is the most valuable inheritance she received from her father, and on the other - the only chance to get out of the snowy Nepal back into civilization. Without reaching a definitive decision, Marion hangs the medallion at the counter, and in the meantime, the Nazi agent, a torture specialist, Major Arnold Toth, comes in with a few armed thugs.

After a short verbal skirmish, Thoth tries to try out the location of the medallion with Marion, but Jones intervenes. During the fight, a fire occurs; the fire that engulfed the tavern heats the medallion so much that when trying to take possession of it, he gets a severe burn of his hand and runs away in panic. The Marion Tavern collapses and burns down, as soon as the girl has time to pick up the medallion and run outside with Jones. Marion, having no more choice, agrees to work with Jones for a monetary reward that would cover all her losses. After two days of flight, they get to Cairo , where they meet with Sallah, a famous Egyptian digger and an old loyal friend of Indiana. Sallah tells them that he knows where the Nazis are looking for the Ark, and their main adviser is a rival to Johns Rene Bellock. Sallah warns Indiana from a dangerous adventure, superstitiously saying that it is better not to disturb the Ark and leave it where it rests. When Marion and Indy walk around the city, Nazi agents abduct Marion. Indiana tries to save her, but the car Marion was put into explodes.

Indiana falls into apathy, getting drunk at a bar where Bellock meets with him, inviting him to join the Nazis and their quest. Refusing, Indiana miraculously survives: he is saved by the unexpectedly appearing children of Sallah. That evening, Sallah and Jones decode the letters on the medallion with the help of a local old polyglot and understand that this is the key to the location of the Well of Souls, the temple in which the Ark of the Covenant is laid to rest. Guided by the instructions they received, they understand that there is still a chance to get ahead of the Nazis, since they are excavating in the wrong place, using incomplete information: the burn on Thoth’s hand, touching the red-hot medallion, repeated the shape of only one side of the medallion, while the rest of the instructions Critical remarks were drawn on another.

Secretly entering the excavation site, Indiana with the help of Sallah and a genuine medallion finds the right place for excavation, and then discovers that Marion was not really dead, but was held captive by Bellock. Hurryingly explaining to the girl that she still cannot rescue her, Indiana leaves. Rene Bellock unsuccessfully tries to find out Jones’s intentions in a good way, flirting and drinking wine with her, but she does not succumb and pretends to be drunk, and then suddenly grabs a hidden knife and, threatening them with Bellock, intends to run. When trying to escape, the girl is stopped by Arnold Thoth, but, apparently, she also does not get anything from her.

Meanwhile, Indiana and Sallah gather a small team and begin to dig in the right place. Toward night, they discover the stone cover of the Soul Well hidden underground. The entire floor of the temple is teeming with poisonous snakes, which Indiana is terribly afraid of. Indiana and Sallah go downstairs, take out the ark from the Well, but at dawn Bellock and the Nazis find them and select the find, and Jones is left in the Well of Souls, dropping Marion, which became unnecessary, and closing the temple with a lid.

However, Indiana and Marion miraculously find their way out, appearing just in time - they discover a Luftwaffe plane (a fantastic flying-wing bomber ) ready to transport the ark to Berlin . After a fight with the Nazis, the plane explodes.

Bellock understands that Jones managed to escape and the accident at the airport - his job. Colonel Dietrich decides to deliver the ark with a convoy reinforced by soldiers to Cairo , and from there transfer it by ship to Germany . Having stolen the horse from the diggers, Jones sets off in pursuit of the convoy, with great difficulty grabs the truck with the ark and, after the chase, hides on it. That evening, Jones and Marion, grabbing the Ark, leave Cairo on the smugglers ' ship The Bantu Wind, under the command of the hospitable captain Simon Katanga, about to sail to England.

The Nazis unraveled the plan of Jones and the next morning the German submarine U-96, under the command of Dietrich and Bellock, intercepts the Katanga vessel. Jones manages to hide. Soldiers search the ship and find the Ark in a cargo hold, but, to the captain’s great surprise, they don’t find Jones, after which they begin to question Katanga; the captain improvises and claims that he allegedly killed Jones as unnecessary, and "girls" like Marion are in demand where he is swimming. The Nazis take Marion and the Ark with them. Indiana, meanwhile, enters a submarine, which headed for the Nazi secret island camp. Having stolen a soldier’s uniform and a hand grenade launcher , Jones pursues Bellock and enters an isolated canyon , where the Nazis plan to check the contents of the Ark before sending it to his Fuhrer .

To open the Ark at the insistence of Bellock, it was necessary to perform an ancient Jewish ritual, to which the Nazi officers agreed reluctantly and with great rejection. Jones intercepts the convoy with the Ark, and, threatening to blow up the Ark with a grenade launcher, demands that Marion be released, but Bellock realizes that this is just a bluff and forces Jones to surrender (as an archaeologist, he will never be able to destroy the greatest treasure in history) . During the opening ceremony of the Ark, Marion and Jones are tied to a pillar. When Bellock, Dietrich, and Thoth open the Ark, they find nothing inside but sand, but soon some spirits break out from there, at first inspiring awe and admiration, but then turning into evil angels of death . Jones realizes that it is dangerous to look at what is happening, and warns Marion to close her eyes and in no case to open, no matter what happens. At that very moment, spirits begin to kill the wicked Nazis, melting their faces and blowing up their heads, and then sweep across the island with a cleansing firestorm, freeing Jones and Marion from their bonds, and return back to the Ark.

Upon returning to Washington, Jones and Marcus Brody meet with military intelligence agents again and say that the Ark is too dangerous, but agents assure them that the “best people” will carefully study the find. An annoyed Indiana leaves the Secret Service building hand in hand with Marion.

In the last frames we are shown how the Ark is hammered into a box with the inscription " Top Secret " and left in a giant government warehouse, literally packed with thousands of the same boxes.

See the full list at IMDb.com .

• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Plot: George Lucas , Philip Kaufman
• Screenplay: Lawrence Casdan
• Producers: George Lucas , Howard Kazanjyan , Frank Marshall
• Composer: John Williams
• Operator: Douglas Slocombe
• Montage: Michael Kahn

Initial Stage

In 1973, George Lucas wrote four stories under the general title “The Adventures of Indiana Smith” ^[2] . As in the case of the fourth episode of Star Wars , he saw this as the basis for filming a modern version of the classic adventure series of the 1930s – 1940s ^[3] . Together with Phillip Kaufman, they developed the concept and characters, and also decided to build a plot around the search for the Ark of the Covenant ^[4] . However, the project was suspended when Clint Eastwood invited Kaufman to shoot the picture "Josie Wales is a man outside the law" ^[4] . At the end of May 1977 , while relaxing in Hawaii , Lucas met with his friend Steven Spielberg ^[5] . In one conversation, Spielberg hinted that he was interested in working on one of the James Bond films . Then Lucas told his friend that he had a character "much better than James Bond" on his mind and demonstrated the achievements of the "Seekers of the Lost Ark." Spielberg was impressed by calling it a “James Bond movie without spyware” ^[6] , but he insisted that the character's name be replaced with “Jones” ^[3] .

The next year, Lucas focused on writing and preparing The Seekers and the 5th episode of Star Wars , when Frank Marshall and Lawrence Kazdan joined the project as producers and screenwriters respectively. From January 23 to January 27, 1978, Lucas, Spielberg and Kazdan spent nine hours a day thinking through the history and visual ideas of the film. It was then that Spielberg came up with a scene with Jones running away from a rolling boulder ^[7] , and Lucas with a submarine, a monkey giving a Nazi salute, and a girl beating Jones in Nepal ^[6] . For six months, Kazdan created the first draft of the script from a hundred-page transcript of their conversations and 20-page title of Lucas ^[8] . Ultimately, some of their ideas turned out to be too grandiose: Kezdan excluded from the script an escape from the museum in Shanghai ^[9] , a plane jump into the river, and much more. Some of these scenes will subsequently be used in sequels. Lucas and Spielberg argued for a long time about the character's character: if Lucas saw him as a bond-like playboy, then Spielberg and Kazdan believed that the character should be darker, they saw him as an alcoholic, interpreting with Fred Dobbs, the character of Humphrey Bogart , from the 1948 movie “Treasures” Sierra Madre . " This problem has disappeared with subsequent improvements. Spielberg also wanted to see Thoth with a mechanical arm, but Lucas rejected this, considering it unnecessary to go into science fiction . Also, to create original illustrations, for pre-production, a comic book artist Jim Steranko was invited, whose work subsequently strongly influenced the vision of the whole film and directly of Indiana Jones, Spielberg ^[10] .

In September 1979, The Empire Strikes Back went into post-production and Lucas completely switched to promoting The Seekers of the Lost Ark. Many studios refused to take on the project after the Spielberg "1941" failed, believing that the film would not pay back the 20 million necessary for its production. They also refused to accept the conditions under which most of the fees and full ownership of the film passed to its creators. In the end, despite worries about the cost of the painting, Paramount Pictures, led by Michael Eisner, agreed to begin work on the project, provided that they removed at least four more sequels with Lucasfilm . By April 1980, everything was ready for filming. With four illustrators, the film has become Spielberg's most widely- worn film in his career, and remains so to this day. In order to save money, he and Lucas agreed to meet the shortest possible time and stylistically follow the “quick and dirty” manner of staging retro series.

When it came to casting, Spielberg immediately offered Harrison Ford the lead role, but Lucas refused, saying he didn’t want Ford to be his “ Bobby De Niro, ” or “the guy I shove in my every film". Wanting to find a lesser-known actor for this role, Lucas persuaded Spielberg to go in search of a new talent. The actor on which their views converged was Tom Selleck , who possessed the distinctive features characteristic of Ford, but was at the same time much more athletic. However, Selleck could not accept the offer because of a contract for the filming of the television series " Private Detective Magnum ." In June 1980, three weeks before filming began, Spielberg persuaded Lucas to offer Ford the role after Frank Marshall and co-producer Kathleen Kennedy were impressed by the image of Han Solo created by Ford in Empire Strikes Back. Upon receiving the offer, Ford agreed.

Filming

Filming began on June 23, 1980 in La Rochelle , France . There they shot scenes with the Nazi submarine , especially for which Lucas rented the same submarine, which would later be used by Wolfgang Petersen in the film “The Boat” . Then the crew moved to Elstra , England , where they shot most of the scenes with the Well of Souls , the Marion Bar ^[11] and the scenes in the dungeon to start the film.

Then the team went to Tunisia , which served as a replacement for Egypt . The appearance of Sallah was filmed in Kairouan . One of the film’s most famous scenes was shot there, in which Jones kills a sword-wielding assassin . This scene was completely invented on the set. Initially, it was planned as a complex fencing match, in which Jones confronted a fencer with a sword using a whip. Part of this scene was even filmed and can be seen in one of the film’s early trailers. But the shooting was very difficult and tiring, the reason for which was the heat and dysentery, which was then record for Tunisia, which Ford fell ill with. At one point, Harrison got tired of it and he told Spielberg: “Why don't I just shoot the asshole?” Spielberg liked this idea and he cut out a duel scene from the script and shot a short shootout, which we see in the film ^[12] .

The opening film was shot in Kauai, Hawaii , and the Washington scene was shot at the San Francisco City Hall . The University of the Pacific acted as the college where Jones taught, and the scenes at Indiana's house were filmed in San Rafael (California) . Spielberg managed to make a film in just 73 days, which was much less than the planned schedule. The final scenes in Washington were included in the film almost by accident, since initially the script of the film did not describe how the relationship between Indy and Marion would end ^[13] . The short scene in which the panorama of Washington is shown is actually borrowed from the 1975 Hindenburg disaster film.

The original musical accompaniment to The Seekers of the Lost Ark was written by composer John Williams and became one of the most recognizable soundtracks thanks to the legendary The Raiders March , which became a symbol of everything connected by Indiana Jones. Williams originally wrote two different versions of The Searchers' March, of which Spielberg chose the one we know now. The soundtrack also contained other notable melodies: the majestic and mysterious “Ark Theme” ( English Ark Theme ), the melody associated with Marion, as well as the loud and pathos “Nazi March” ( English Nazi March ). The soundtrack was nominated for an Oscar , but lost the award to Wangelis' electro-synthetic compositions for the movie Fire Chariots .

The film was released in wide distribution on June 12, 1981 and became the highest grossing movie of 1981 , having collected more than 383 million dollars at the box office with a budget of 20 million, and still remains one of the highest grossing films in history. Seekers of the Lost Ark was nominated for eight 1982 Academy Awards , including the Best Movie Award, and received four of them (Best Sound, Best Editing, Best Decorations, Best Visual Effects), and a special prize for editing sound effects. . The film has been awarded many other awards, including seven Saturn awards .

• In the scenery of “Well of Souls”, on the wall painted with hieroglyphics behind the Ark, among the “writing of the ancients”, two robots are painted - C3PO and R2D2 . Their smaller images are on the altar supporting the Ark ^[14] .
• In World of Warcraft there is a character Harrison Jones. The quest chain with him ends with “Harrison Jones and the Temple of Uldum” and completely repeats the plot of the film.
• The grenade launcher with which Indiana aims at the Nazis does not correspond to the historical period of time.

• " Indiana Jones: Finding the Lost Ark ” on the Internet Movie Database
• IndianaJones.com - official site
• TheRaider.net - fan site
• Indiana Jones: Finding the Lost Ark / Rotten Tomatoes
• Indiana Jones: Searching for the Lost Ark on Yahoo! Movies
• “Indiana Jones: Finding the Lost Ark” on Steven Spielberg’s Russian fan site