filmic inspirations for "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

Rating: 10/10 (25 March 2010)

It's an action-adventure classic, as most know, but what follows may be regarded as SPOILERS to those who haven't yet seen this remarkable roller-coaster ride of a film. In sharing the following paragraphs of information, please do not take this as a denigration of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It was and is a superb motion picture.
Spielberg, Lucas, and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan were obviously well-acquainted with many, many Hollywood films of decades past when they and the rest of the creative team put "Raiders of the Lost Ark" together, as it really is, in many ways, a collage of other movies.
The entire opening sequence was borrowed from the 1973 film "Papillon" starring Steve McQueen. McQueen even wears a similar open shirt and fedora when approaching a leper colony settlement amid a South American jungle in one scene, and is subsequently pursued by natives with blowguns in a following scene (sound familiar?). McQueen encounters a Hispanic man who helps him along the way, only to be impaled on a wooden-barbed booby trap (just like Satipo/Alfred Molina in the opening of "Raiders"). Even John Williams' score in that pursuit sequence sounds like Jerry Goldsmith's score in "Papillon." When Indy travels to Nepal we see the map with a red line running along it. This device was used in many films of Hollywood's golden age, notably "Casablanca" (1942). The Nazi character in black civilian clothes was modelled, to some degree, after Peter Lorre (who also co-starred in "Casablanca"), and when Indy and Marion leave Nepal in a DC-3(or 2?) with Chinese characters written on its side, flying over Himalayan mountains, it is a clear nod to a similar scene in Frank Capra's 1937 "Lost Horizon" film.
Once in Egypt, Marion is pursued by locals working for the Nazis, and hides in one basket amid many. This is an homage to a similar scene featuring Sabu in the 1940 Korda film "Thief of Bagdad." After Marion's (presumed) death, Indy sits despondently at a table with liquor bottle in hand (an intentional remake of a scene with Humphrey Bogart from "Casablanca"). When a native's monkey emulates (and mocks) the Nazi's 'Sieg heil' hand gesture it is a similar humorous device used by a monkey tipping his hat to the Queen in the Errol Flynn-starring film "The Sea Hawk" (1940).
When Indy (and later Marion) is lowered into a pit filled with ancient sarcophagi and treasures (and snakes), facing a king cobra, it is mirroring a scene with Sabu in a pit filled with ancient Indian treasures and a king cobra in the 1942 Korda film "The Jungle Book." Much of Indy's derring do and fighting with Egyptians who are in league with the Nazis is derived from the type of antics seen in "Gunga Din" (1939) starring Cary Grant, Victor McLagen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as British sergeants in colonial India.
Indiana Jones' look (the fedora, leather jacket, unshaved face, etc.) was chiefly taken from that of Charlton Heston's character in "Secret of the Incas" (1954), and there is a scene in that film where Heston discovers the location of a treasure by the passage of light through on object, much like Indiana Jones' use of the staff in the well of souls to find the ark's location.
When Indy is dragged by his bullwhip on a dusty road by the Nazi's lorry (truck) the scene recalls men being dragged by ropes behind camels in the 1939 Korda film "The Four Feathers." The scene with the ark lid spinning around what is supposed to be a heavenly tornado of sorts is a direct allusion to Dorothy's house spinning around in "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).
The finale with the large room of boxes, one containing the ark, is a reference to the finale of Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" (1941) showing the title character's vast, posthumous holdings.