The Indiana Jones franchise famously began as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas sought to pay tribute to the serials that inspired them in their respective youths, including Zorro, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon, to name three. Spielberg was also driven by his admiration for the James Bond movies, but a classic western from two genre icons also played a huge part.
The Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List director has always been partial to the collaborations between John Ford and John Wayne, admitting to the American Film Institute that he revisits their output each time he’s prepping a new project: “I turn on a John Ford film – one or two – before every movie, simply because he inspires me,” he said.
Adding: “I’m very sensitive to the way he uses his camera to paint his pictures and the way he frames things. And the way he stages and blocks his people, often keeping the camera static while people give you the illusion there’s a lot more kinetic movement occurring when there’s not.”
Comparing Ford to a classic painter for the way “he celebrates the frame, not just what happens inside of it,” Spielberg named The Searchers as one he looks at in particular. However, that’s not the feature that was directly homaged in one of the most memorable stunts from Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Stagecoach being celebrated in that regard.
The transcendent 1939 epic’s fingerprints are all over the iconic scene that features Harrison Ford’s title hero being dragged underneath a truck carrying the Ark of the Covenant. Just like in Spielberg’s production, Ford accomplished his own daredevil filmmaking feat without using any special effects whatsoever.
During a chase sequence set later on in Stagecoach, stunt performer Yakima Canutt jumps from a horse to the titular mode of transport at a speed of 45 miles per hour, where he’s instantly greeted with a bullet courtesy of Wayne’s Ringo Kid. Plummeting to the unforgiving ground below, he ends up being left in the dust as both the stagecoach and its equine runners pass over him.
The similarities between Stagecoach’s pulse-pounding showdown and Raiders‘ high-octane chase are there for all to see, both in the way Indy leaps from horseback to a moving vehicle and his subsequent scrape with the underside of it.
It’s also fitting that both take place against a dust-covered backdrop, with Spielberg explaining one of the many reasons why he admires Stagecoach: “For one thing, it was John Ford’s first foray into Monument Valley,” he said. “So he was starting to use landscape art to help tell his story, to create God’s country, and to put little figures in a grand landscape. And he began to bring nature into his films, more than with the silent movies. This is where he would begin to use nature as a character in his picture.”
Raiders of the Lost Ark features no shortage of derring-do exciting action on its own, with Ford and Wayne’s masterpiece still showcasing its influential nature more than 40 years after release in one of the greatest blockbusters ever made.
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