The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Steven Spielberg · a film · 1981 · about 115 minutes · screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan, from a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman
Mode
Adventure serial and treasure picture of the 1930s, made with the scale and craft of a studio feature, ending in a visitation of the sacred
Mythos
The quest for a holy relic; the hero’s trials and his descent into a pit of serpents beneath the earth; the rival who is his double; the relic that strikes down those who seize it
Phase
One search in 1936, in thirteen stretches: a prologue in Peru, a lecture, Nepal, Cairo and Tanis, the Well of Souls, two chases, the sea, the island where the Ark is opened, and a warehouse in Washington
Presentation
Feature film in colour, anamorphic Panavision, about 115 minutes, in one cut; a Lucasfilm production released by Paramount on 12 June 1981, John Williams’s march and Ark theme, Ben Burtt’s sound
Register
Peril and the joke inside it; the bravado of a serial hero who is often beaten and afraid; awe in the Map Room, dread on the island, and a cold last shot
Scale
Five countries, one hero, one rival, one woman, one army in the sand and one object
Governing Proposition
In 1936 an American archaeologist who robs temples for his museum is sent by Army Intelligence to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis, who want it for its power, can dig it out of the sand at Tanis. He finds it, loses it, takes it back and loses it again, and at the end it is opened before him by the men who have seized it. The wager of the film is that a modern competence that measures, carries, sells and arms itself with everything will meet a holy thing it cannot hold or even look at; that every flourish of human power is undone by something simpler and stronger; and that the state which sent the hero to find the thing will lose it again among its own crates.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
A jungle in Peru, and a man in a hat and a leather jacket, seen from behind, leading guides toward a temple. In eleven minutes the prologue gives everything the film will need of him. He reads the traps as a scholar reads a text, weighs a bag of sand against a golden idol on its altar, and makes the exchange; the temple answers anyway, and he runs from a boulder down the passage he came in by. Outside, his rival Belloq is waiting, and takes the idol. Jones escapes to a seaplane, and finds a snake in the cockpit. He is afraid of snakes.
Then a lecture hall at Marshall College, where the same man, in glasses and a tweed suit, teaches archaeology. Two men from Army Intelligence come to see him and his colleague Brody: the Nazis are digging at Tanis, in Egypt, and they are looking for Jones’s old teacher, and for a headpiece that shows where to dig. Jones explains the Ark of the Covenant to them from an illustrated Bible, in which the Ark’s fire strikes down an army. The film has planted its ending in its second scene, and it is the first of many plants that the screenplay will pay.
Steven Spielberg directed it, from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan after a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman; Frank Marshall produced it, with George Lucas and Howard Kazanjian as executive producers, for Lucasfilm. Douglas Slocombe photographed it, Michael Kahn edited it, Norman Reynolds designed it, John Williams wrote the music and Ben Burtt made the sound effects. Harrison Ford plays Indiana Jones, Karen Allen Marion Ravenwood, Paul Freeman Belloq, Ronald Lacey Toht, John Rhys-Davies Sallah and Denholm Elliott Brody. Paramount released it in the United States on 12 June 1981. It runs about 115 minutes, in one cut, and that cut is judged here.
Movement II
Nepal, and a bar in the snow. Marion Ravenwood, the daughter of Jones’s teacher, wins a drinking contest against a man twice her size, and when Jones comes in she hits him: there is an old injury between them, and her father is dead. She has the headpiece. Toht, the Gestapo’s man, comes for it, the bar catches fire, and in the struggle Toht seizes the medallion from the flames and it burns its pattern into his palm. He will carry one face of it to Tanis, and the Nazis will measure their staff from half the evidence and dig in the wrong place.
Cairo, with Sallah, Jones’s friend and digger. Marion is taken in the market, and the chase among the baskets is cut so that the viewer always knows where she is and where Jones is, at speed. A swordsman clears a space and flourishes his blade, and Jones, tired, shoots him. It is the film’s law in one beat: the flourish undone by the simpler thing, and the laugh comes because the chain of fights before it has taught the viewer to expect another. Marion seems to die in a truck that explodes.
A monkey salutes, and is a spy. A dish of dates is poisoned, and the plant pays at once: the monkey eats one and dies, and Jones’s date is caught before it reaches his mouth: “bad dates”. An old man reads the inscription on the headpiece, and the Nazis’ staff is a kadam too long. Every scene of the first hour has given something the next one uses, and none of it is ornament.
Movement III
In the Map Room at Tanis, Jones sets the headpiece on a staff of the right length, and at the right hour the sun passes through the crystal and a beam falls across a miniature of the buried city, on the one building where the Ark lies. Williams’s Ark theme rises under it. The scholar’s knowledge, used rightly, lights the true place: it is the most beautiful passage in the film, and the whole stretch in Cairo was built to arrive at it.
He finds Marion alive, bound in a tent, and leaves her tied, because to free her would give him away. Then the dig by night, and the descent: torches thrown down into a chamber whose floor moves with snakes, the hero’s oldest fear made the floor of the holy place. The Ark is lifted out on its poles. Belloq takes it from the top of the shaft, Marion is thrown down, and the two are sealed in among the serpents and the dead.
They break out through a wall. The descent beneath the earth is the oldest of the quest’s trials, and the film builds it fully; but the man who climbs out is the same man who went down, as the serial form requires. Above, Belloq is the hero’s double, the scholar who is also a thief, and the film says so in a few speeches and then lets the action carry it.
Movement IV
At an airstrip, Jones fights a mechanic around a flying wing whose propeller turns beside them, while Marion is trapped in the cockpit and fuel spreads from a tank; the mechanic is cut down by the blade and the wing explodes. The brutality of the propeller sits close to the jauntiness of the fight, and the tone between them is not always settled. The model work and rear projection show here.
Then the truck chase, sustained for minutes: Jones on horseback, then at the wheel, thrown through the windscreen, dragged beneath the chassis on his whip and climbing back up the side. Kahn keeps the geography exact at every cut, and Burtt’s sound gives each blow its weight. Asked what he will do, Jones answers that he is making it up “as I go”, and the form has said the same thing for an hour: he exists as a body that improvises, and the chain of set pieces never lets him rest.
The Ark goes to sea on a tramp steamer, the Bantu Wind, and a German submarine takes it and Marion. Jones crosses the sea on the conning tower, how the film does not say. In the hold, the Ark burns the swastika from the side of its crate. The passage is the slackest in the film, filled rather than required, and it suspends the physical law the rest obeys with care; but the burning crate is one more plant for the end.
Movement V
On a Mediterranean island Jones threatens to destroy the Ark with a rocket launcher, and gives up, and is tied to a post beside Marion. Belloq, in the robes of a priest, opens it before the German officers. At first there is sand. Then spirits rise from it, beautiful and then deathly, and Jones and Marion, bound to the post, shut their eyes. The men who look are destroyed: faces melt, a column of fire goes up into the sky and comes down into the Ark, and the lid falls back with a sound. After two hours in which skill solved everything, the only right act was not to look.
In Washington the government men assure Jones that the Ark is being studied by “top men”. A crate is stencilled, nailed shut and wheeled by a clerk into a warehouse of crates that runs out of sight. The state that sent its hero to find the thing has lost it again, by filing it. It is a cold last shot, and it is the film’s second truth, set in one image.
The film won four competitive Academy Awards, for art direction, sound, film editing and visual effects, with a special award for its sound effects editing; it was the highest grossing film of its year, and was chosen for the National Film Registry in 1999. Three sequels followed. What it knows is in a beam of light that finds the place, in a man who shuts his eyes, and in a warehouse: that the holy thing will not be held, and that those who sought it will lose it among their own crates.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on structure and on the screenplay’s economy, which is the film’s most praised virtue and earns the praise. Run the subtractive test through the first hour and it meets resistance at every turn. The prologue gives the hero’s method, his fear of snakes and his rival in eleven minutes; the lecture gives the Ark’s power and the staff; the headpiece burned into Toht’s palm gives the Nazis their wrong measure, so that they dig in the wrong place; the monkey and the dates pay at once; the sunbeam in the Map Room is the answer the whole Cairo stretch prepared. Every plant is paid. What gives is the second half: the passage by ship and submarine is filled rather than required, Jones’s crossing on the conning tower is left unexplained, and the stretch could lose half its length without loss.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and the ending makes it real. A modern competence, archaeological, military and commercial, treats the holy as an object to be measured, carried, sold or used as a weapon; the holy thing cannot be possessed or even looked at, and Jones survives its opening only because he shuts his eyes. A second truth is set in one shot: the state that commissioned the search buries the find in a warehouse among thousands of crates, lost to the files as surely as it was lost to the sand. A third is Belloq, the scholar as thief, Jones’s mirror. What holds the figure: these are premises of an adventure more than a condition worked through; the Nazis are villains of the serial, not of history; Marion’s life and the people of Cairo and Peru are surfaces; and much of what the film gives is exhilaration, which is a mood.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Elevation comes often and is chiefly of one kind, transport by speed and danger. The boulder down the passage; the figure in the doorway of the bar against the fire; the sunbeam striking the miniature city in the Map Room as Williams’s Ark theme rises, the film’s most beautiful passage; the slow descent into a chamber floored with snakes, lit by torches thrown down; the truck chase, sustained for minutes, with Jones dragged beneath the chassis. The summit is dreadful: the Ark opened on the island, the spirits rising beautiful and then deathly, the faces melting, the column of fire, the lid falling back with a sound. The last shot, the crate lost among crates, is a cold height of its own. What holds the figure: most of the height is the thrill of a ride, delighted rather than deep, and the dread is gathered into the last minutes.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The quest for a holy relic is built, and it bears the structure: the hero’s trials, the descent beneath the earth into a pit of serpents, the sealed tomb, the rival who is the hero’s double, and the relic whose power punishes those who seize it, as the Ark of the Bible struck down those who touched it. The particular stays particular: a bullwhip, a hat, a monkey, a staff measured in kadams. The film honours the myth it carries by letting the sacred act at the end, unasked, against the powers of the world, and that act completes the pattern the descent began rather than being laid on top of it. What holds the figure: part of the charge is evoked through the serial and the Bible rather than made; the descent changes nothing in the hero; and the double is drawn in a few speeches.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The inheritance is the adventure serial and the B picture of the 1930s and 1940s, Republic’s chapter plays and the jungle and treasure films, the Bond film’s chain of set pieces, and above all Star Wars (1977), which had already proved that the serial, made with a studio picture’s scale and craft, could command the largest audience in the world. The turns are real and are the film’s own: the serial’s cliffhanger made the rhythm of a whole feature; an action hero who is a scholar, fallible, often beaten and afraid; real Old Testament power at the climax of a pulp adventure; a heroine who drinks, punches and runs her own bar. What holds the axis lowest of the eleven the Universal Minimum covers: the wager was placed on a path its producer had proved four years before, and its stake was in money and reputation, not in form.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Change the form and the film loses what it knows. The chain of set pieces, each closing on peril and opening on the next, is the instrument of the hero: Jones exists as a body that improvises, and the form proves it by giving him no rest; his “as I go” is the film’s whole method. The form carries the joke that defines its world, the swordsman’s display answered by a single shot, which lands only because the chain has taught the viewer to expect a fight. The ending is the form’s best act: after two hours in which skill solves everything, the only right action is to shut one’s eyes, and a form that has prized doing is answered by not looking. What holds the figure: within each act the set pieces could be reordered without change of meaning, and the form serves knowledge chiefly at the close.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Forty-five years of return are evidence, and the film rewards return above all as making. Its cutting and staging are taught and analysed shot by shot, and its screenplay is a model in the study of screenwriting; a viewer who knows every turn still finds the geography of the truck chase and the timing of its jokes exact, and finds more in them. On meaning, the questions that stay open are real if few: whether the warehouse is satire of the state or a joke; what the film’s treatment of the sacred amounts to, from makers who present the Ark’s power as real; whether its colonial adventure is pastiche or inheritance, a question criticism has pressed with force. What holds the figure: the readings converge, and the film is enjoyed more richly on return rather than differently.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Field: the cinema of the 1980s, the film having been released in 1981, so force and reach are scored together. The intrinsic force is a synthesis brought to a pitch: the film took the serial revival Star Wars had begun and fixed the present form of a genre, the action adventure as a chain of set pieces cut for momentum, humour inside peril, a fallible hero, sound and score carrying the action. What holds the figure short of the films that changed the art itself: the turn was its producer’s before it was the film’s, and the field it moved is the popular feature more than film’s possibilities. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: three sequels and a television series; the adventure films of the decade, Romancing the Stone and King Solomon’s Mines among them; later series such as The Mummy and National Treasure; beyond film, the video game of exploration and peril, Tomb Raider and Uncharted, which takes its grammar directly; and the archaeologist adventurer, a stock figure because of it.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, across forty-five years. The form survives whole: there is one cut, the film as released is available, and the alterations of later home editions are small and take nothing from its form. Presence is of the widest kind: continuous on television and on every home format, in repertory and in teaching, chosen for the National Film Registry in 1999, its theme and its boulder known to people who have not seen it. Part of that is fame, which is not proof of permanence, but the teaching is use. That presence would carry the figure a tenth higher. The charge is surface: the native people of the prologue and the crowds of Cairo are drawn as a serial of the 1930s drew them, and that surface has aged as attitude, not only as period, and draws criticism that grows rather than fades.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Command of the medium, and the making bears weight almost continuously. Michael Kahn’s cutting of the basket chase and the truck chase keeps geography exact at speed, and the film’s comedy lives in its cuts, the swordsman, the monkey’s salute. Douglas Slocombe lights the Map Room’s beam, the torchlit pit and the island at night with real beauty. Williams’s march and the Ark theme carry identity and awe; Ben Burtt’s sound, the whip, the boulder, the Ark’s hum, is part of the meaning. Harrison Ford plays fear, pain and competence in one face, and Karen Allen gives Marion weight. The charges fall in visible places: rear projection and model work that show in the fight at the flying wing and on the sea, the slack passage by ship and submarine, and Belloq and Toht drawn thinly. Command, not mastery at every point: a tenth below Jaws, at 8.8.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the swordsman in the Cairo market, flourishing his blade until Jones shoots him with a shrug, and the opening of the Ark, where fire from heaven melts the faces of the men who presumed to look. One law governs both: every flourish of human power is undone by something simpler and stronger, a pistol, a boulder, a sunbeam, a snake, God. The comedy and the terror obey it alike, and the film plants its supernatural end from the lecture on, in the illustrated Bible, the headpiece branded into Toht’s palm and the Ark burning the swastika from its crate, so that the last act fulfils the law rather than changing genre. The range is wide. What holds the figure: the submarine passage suspends the physical law the rest obeys with care, and the tone between the brutal, the propeller at the flying wing, and the jaunty is sometimes uneven.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Judged on what a film of about 115 minutes holds. The sacred is held, decisively at the close; history enters in the Nazi search for occult power in 1936 and in the Ark’s biblical past; the state, in Army Intelligence and its warehouse; learning and its trade, in the college, the museum and the market in antiquities; love, in the old injury between Jones and Marion; and a debt of fathers, Marion’s father who was Jones’s teacher, in one scene. The orders are present and linked by one object, the Ark, which passes through each of them in turn. What holds the figure lowest of the twelve: consciousness is drawn from outside and stays the same from first scene to last; family, labour, the natural order and the peoples of the lands the film crosses are absent or surfaces; and history is a backdrop to the chase more than an order the film holds.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.0 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.7, then The Imperishable at 8.6 and Pressure on Tradition and The Inner Law at 8.4. A making in which Kahn’s cutting, Slocombe’s light, Williams’s music and Burtt’s sound carry the argument; a form that survives whole in one cut, with a presence as wide as a film’s can be; a reach into the genre and beyond film; and one law, the flourish undone by the simpler thing, that holds from the swordsman to the opened Ark.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: the sacred, the state, learning and its trade, and history as setting are held through one object, but consciousness is drawn from outside and the peoples of the lands the film crosses are surfaces. Below the rest, The Swerve at 7.3, a turn placed on its producer’s proven path with a stake in money rather than form; and The Unconcealment at 7.4, a truth stated once at the close and otherwise a premise of the adventure.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5, by seven tenths. The Coherence Floor clears: The Made at 8.7, The Inner Law at 8.4, The Living Form at 7.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5 by a tenth, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.4 falls a tenth short, The Archetypal Deep at 8.2 three tenths short, The Unconcealment at 7.4 a point and a tenth short and The Swerve at 7.3 a point and two tenths short. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Swerve, 7.3, and The Unconcealment, 7.4, both below 7.5; The Bottomless Well meets it exactly at 7.5, and The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Three of the five summit conditions are met: the Necessity Cap, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The twelve sum to 95.4, an average of 7.95 that displays 8.0, in Tier IV, at the 8.0 at which it begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Raiders of the Lost Ark as released by Paramount in the United States on 12 June 1981, a Lucasfilm production, the one cut of about 115 minutes, from the jungle in Peru to the warehouse in Washington: directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan, after a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman, produced by Frank Marshall, photographed by Douglas Slocombe, edited by Michael Kahn, with music by John Williams, production design by Norman Reynolds and sound effects by Ben Burtt. There is one cut; later home editions, which carry a changed title and small alterations, are not the object and are weighed only under The Imperishable. No print, script or recording was consulted. Dialogue is quoted only where its words are certain, and other speech is described. Claims that could not be verified, among them the year of the retitling and the particulars of the alterations in later editions, the budget, schedule and circumstances of the production, an amateur remake made by three boys in the 1980s, and the share of the running time given to action, are not given.