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Rating: George Lucas has always been an "inventor." As a young man, finding the seat belts in his car inadequate, he decided to design a different type to install in his vehicle. He did manage to install them, but they didn't work marvelously. Luckily. He had a car accident, and his seat belts, not holding him, didn't imprison him in his seat, avoiding more serious injuries than what he had, that is, leg injuries that forced him to spend some time in bed. But the bed wasn't enough to hold back the fervent imagination of Lucas, a budding director. Looking at an old poster hanging in his room, he imagined the figure of an archaeologist not just as a university professor imprisoned behind his desk, but also as an adventurer in search of precious artifacts firsthand.
In 1977, George Lucas already had a screenplay ready: the protagonist is named Indiana (like his dog) Jones, he's a university professor in Los Angeles in 1936, and he has to face the Nazis in a frantic search for the Ark of the Covenant, in which, according to biblical tradition, the 10 Commandments are kept. But in those years, Lucas was busy with the most important films of his career, the "Star Wars" trilogy, so he decided to postpone the film's production to 1981 and to get help with directing from his old friend Steven Spielberg. For the role of Indiana Jones, Tom Selleck was chosen, but he couldn't participate in the shooting due to his contract with CBS for Magnum P.I., so Harrison Ford became famous in the role of the archaeologist with the whip. Curious is Ford's story: unexpectedly chosen as the suitable actor to play Han Solo in "A New Hope," he found himself once again, thanks to a stroke of luck, assuming the role of Dr. Jones, the other role for which he is most remembered.
The film is enjoyable, action-packed, and deals with entertaining exaggerations of the real relationship between Nazism and the occult, a practice that greatly fascinated Hitler. To prevent the Ark from falling into the wrong hands, Indiana Jones is helped by an old "friend," Marion (Karen Allen), and Egyptian friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), but it will be difficult to withstand the German power led by Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman), capable of even exploiting Indy's brilliant insights to reach the goal. The editing is certainly notable, for which the film won one of the four Oscars awarded to it, but the sets are also clearly remarkable. The direction doesn't thrill, at least not as much as the characterization of the screenplay, which manages to make clear right from the start which characters are involved: Indiana Jones impresses despite being cynical, greedy, skeptical, and ready to do anything to achieve his goal. Non-believer, but always enigmatically, he has made and probably will make many fall in love with him. Worth mentioning is the presence of Denholm Elliott, a great from English theatre. The soundtrack definitely deserves a mention, but at this point, no one is surprised by John Williams anymore.
The film is a cult movie of the 80s. It allowed the award-winning Lucas-Spielberg tandem to entertain the audience and make quite a bit of money, thus managing to partially forget various inaccuracies in the direction and historical choices. The figure of Indiana Jones remains significant, but the attempt to revisit the adventure cinema of bygone times succeeds only partially, especially in the first film of what will be the successful Indiana Jones trilogy.
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