INDIANA JONES: THE SEARCH FOR THE LOST GOLDEN AGE | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Clelia Cohan / Antoine Cousat (12A, 53 mins)
Released on the free-to-stream Arte channel, this documentary about everyone’s favourite archaeologist comes on the 40th anniversary of Raiders Of The Lost Ark and just as the fifth Indiana Jones film starts shooting. The French documentary traces the hero from his inception on a beach in Hawaii in 1977, where George Lucas had retreated with friend Steven Spielberg to escape the opening weekend numbers for Star Wars. Scared that his space opera might flop, it instead became a franchise-spawning blockbuster and Lucas turned to his next project.
Spielberg dreamed of making a James Bond movie, Lucas offered him something else: an adventurous archaeologist with a cool hat and whip. Spielberg had launched the blockbuster wave with the success of Jaws, and the thought of the pair creating something together should surely have been a no-brainer for studios. Initially not: the documentary shows that Spielberg had always run over on shoots, costing studios money. Fine when you have huge successes like Jaws and Close Encounters, less so with, for example, failed war comedy 1941.
To get the cash to make the film, Spielberg had to bring Raiders… in on time and under budget, which he did with 12 shooting days to spare. The doc has some great on-set footage for Indiana Jones nerds such as this reviewer, whilst also casting a very cineaste French take on the nature of these films. Lucas and Spielberg had been informed by the 1930s and 40s adventure serials of their youth, shots from which are lovingly retooled and recrafted by the gifted film makers with the sole aim to entertain.
The documentary argues that Indiana Jones rebirthed the adventure film genre, brought back old-fashioned entertainment and proved that audiences will always crave excitement and cliffhangers. Affectionate but a little slim, this is nevertheless worth checking out for fans of Harrison Ford’s whip-cracking, fedora-wearing adventurer.
Streaming now on arte.tv, here
words KEIRON SELF