Birthday of Indiana Jones

On June 12, 1981 in the United States, in more than 1000 movie theaters across the country, the premiere of the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Director Steven Spielberg.

Almost simultaneously with the premiere in the USA (with a difference of 3 days), the film officially premiered in the USSR, and the Soviet Union became the second country after the USA in which this film was shown.

The prototype of Indiana Jones was Otto Wilhelm Rahn, a German writer and researcher, amateur archaeologist, an employee of Anenerbe, Obersturmführer SS.

They say that Steven Spielberg once said: «I made it as a B-movie. I didn't see the film as anything more than a better made version of the Republic serials.». And, indeed, the initial budget of the picture was approximately $ 6 million. But then George Lucas joined in the work on the film, which brought many significant additions to the film's script. Given the increased costs due to a change in scenario, the budget for the film tripled. George Lucas assumed responsibility for financing the increased costs.

Along with changes in the script and in the budget of the picture, Lucas wanted to make changes in the cast. In particular, he wanted to replace George Harrison, whom Steven Spielberg had seen in the title role initially. But this desire was not dictated by any disbelief in the acting talent of Harrison. Quite the opposite. Harrison starred in several previous films by George Lucas and he, Lucas, was afraid that Harrison would stick some offensive nickname, such as "My Bobby", which stuck to Robert De Niro after he starred in several films by Martin Scorsese. Moreover, as mentioned above, great success of the film was not originally intended. Lucas and Spielberg went over a dozen possible replacements for Harrison, but they did not find anyone more suitable.

But the film literally fell in unexpected success. As for festival successes, the film received 35 film awards and 24 nominations. True, film awards were mainly received in the USA for technical achievements. In the most important nominations - Best Film or Best Director - the juries preferred other paintings. So, in the nomination Best Director both Oscar and Golden Globe were given to Warren Beatty for the film "Reds". In the Best Film nomination, again, both the Oscars and the British BAFTA Prize were awarded to the film "Chariots of Fire." César's French film award, for which Spielberg was nominated for Best Foreign Film, was also awarded to another film, David Lynch's "Elephant Man".

But the box office of all three of the above films, bypassing the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in the struggle for festival awards, even taken together could not exceed the third part of those fees that Steven Spielberg's film reached. The film, which cost its creators, according to various estimates, in the amount of from 18 to 22 million dollars, earned more than 390 million dollars. In accordance with the agreement on financing the movie, more than forty percent of the proceeds went to George Lucas.

We know many examples when financially successful films received unpleasant reviews from film critics. But this Spielberg's film is a completely different case. According to the site Rotten Tomatoes 95% of reviews of professional American film critics were purely positive. Moreover, the most authoritative critics are among the authors of laudatory reviews.

So, Roger Ebert gave the film a maximum of 4 stars, included it in his list of "Great Movies" and wrote in his review: «"Raiders of the Lost Ark" is an out-of-body experience, a movie of glorious imagination and breakneck speed that grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later — breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on your face. This movie celebrates the stories we spent our adolescence searching for in the pulp adventure magazines."

And the movie reviewer of the leading American media - The New York Times - Vincent Canby, described Spielberg's work: "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is one of the most deliriously funny, ingenious and stylish American adventure movies ever made."

The film is replete with historical and geographical inaccuracies, but thanks to the sparkling humor and light fantastic, it does not occur to anyone to bring claims to its authors about this. Moreover, the film does not pretend to represent the historical genre in the slightest degree. As Russian film critic Yevgeny Nefyodov noted, “Spielberg, observing external plausibility and juggling countless cultural stereotypes, manages to maintain an ironic intonation, to infect you with a sense of a fascinating - albeit sometimes deadly - game. A game that gradually goes beyond the ordinary, leading into a fantastic mythological sphere ... "

80% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world rated "Raiders of the Lost Ark" from 8 to 10.

Based on the above success indicators for the film, its rating according to FilmGourmand is 8.723, which makes it 233rd in the Golden Thousand.