The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 377

CALENDAR MOVIES adds another element: His heroes are down to earth, approachable, with a Comman Man element in common. They are not Jedi knights or galaxies away, but more likely to be only one back fence away. The Lucas-Spielberg pairing seems inspired for both. "Raiders" has the power, the innocence and the astonishment of "Star Wars" and the action-adventure energy of "Jaws." 'Ri aiders" opens like a superserial. Indiana leading his natives on a -hunt for a sacred eold idol reassuring human frailties and a lack of the space-age gadgetry which sometimes distance an audience.

Mostly it's just Indy, his wits and his bullwhip, keeping the wicked world in line. But with these weapons Ford emerges in heroic style as a rousing mixture of Bogart and John Wayne at their peaks. His mettle is tested severely: His one full-blown terror is snakes. (Not spiders. When he and his companion are covered in virtual furry vests of tarantulas on the perilous route to the Temple of Chacha-poyon Warriors, he flicks them away im-perturbably.

Certain audience members were whimpering piteously at this point.) But when Indiana at last uncovers the Well of the Souls and finds it carpeted 50 feet below in some 6,000 assorted cobras, rattlers, pythons and boa constrictors, I tell you, he swallows hard. He fights them with gasoline and torches until they lie about like so many snapped fan belts, but there always seem to be more. Indiana seems to be an excruciatingly physical role for Ford, always wavering on the line between stunts an audience can believe and ones no human being has a chance surviving. "Raiders" action is relentless but it hits its peak with an update on the dragged-under-the-stage-coach gag. Ford clings to the front of a lurching German truck, travels underneath it and is finally dragged behind it until you expect him to have no covering left to his bones.

Between the camerawork of Douglas Slocombe, whose lenses seem to be virtually on top of Ford, and the spectacular stuntwork by Terry (Teflon) Leonard and Ford himself, it is a unparalleled action. But quieter scenes are a visual treat too. Slocombe, whose career has ranged somewhere in South America, 1936. Danger is on every side, from the blowguns of the pursuing natives to the perfidy of a traitor's gun. Almost without turning In-dy's bullwhip flicks away the gun.

He outthinks the secret temple's dozen booby traps which are what was the phrase? fiendishly ingenious, I think. The tone of this introductory sequence might be called tongue in check and it pervades the whole film. Screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan is a relative newcomer, brought to the project by Spielberg. Kasdan's script is uncommonly witty; it marches you up to a cliche, then reverses itself at the last second. The payoff of the ominous-looking torture instrument that the leather-coated SS sadist Toht (Ronald Lacey) carries with him is one of these touches.

The setup for a duel between Indiana and his bullwhip and an Arab giant with a scimitar is another. And, bless them, this may be the first adventure film in history in which the uniform of a guard, knocked out and dragged away for his clothes, doesn't fit. The characters have been drawn carefully. The indomitable Marion is fascin- from "Kind Hearts and Coronets" to "Julia," has an eye for a peach-and-brown panoramic sunset, or the sandy beiges and heat-shimmering white of the massive German archeological dig. Longtime Lucas artists, production designer Norman Reynolds and art director Les Dilley, have contributed to the picture's visual luxury, which reaches a peak in the Wall of the Souls.

The dim chamber is supported by four 30-foot-tall, jackal-headed Egyptian figures of the god Anubis, while around them slithers a zoo's worth of snakes. The look of the rest of the film is in splendid '30s style. Seaplanes. Sleek bias-cut dresses. And the Shangri-la period of Marion's Nepalese drinking den.

At the film's grotesque and spectacular last scene, as the Nazis dare to breach the Ark, all of the resources of the company called Industrial Light Magic, the Lucas wunderkinder in Marin County, are brought into play. As a friend remarked, "It does not disappoint." Nor does John Williams' stirring music. The acting, in addition to the physically harrowing and delightfully realized two main roles, is absolutely perfect. Indiana's suave French adversary, Belloq, is Paul Freeman who judges his foe correctly when he calls Indy's history destroying bluff. Indiana's friend, Sallah, who is Arab, is actually played by the 6-foot-2, 224-pound Welsh actor John Rhys-Davies, who is not only quite marvelous but somehow manages with Ford to look like a pairing of Pavarotti and Bogart.

It is always a treat to have Denholm Elliott on a screen, and as the black-leather-coated Nazi with the interesting branded palm, Ronald Lacey is the Peter Lorre update. And in terms of film homages, it must certainly be noticed that the film's closing vote of no confidence in the U.S. Army has the lingering irony of the great artifact warehouse scene from "Citizen Kane." A strange dualism happened while watching "Raiders." There was the almost exhausting excitement of the film itself. And at the same time a second emotion, a rush of gratitude which almost brought tears for the contagious joy and not to be corny about this the strength of the film's positive vision. If this is an era in which the heroic is lacking and the mediocre threatens us from every side, then "Raiders," which has no pretentions to importance, which is unabashedly wide-eyed and exaggerated and true blue but somehow cherishes the best in life and in film making is a high-water mark.

It opens Friday at the National in Westwood and the Chinese in Hollywood. 'RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK' Continued from First Page '30s and '40s Saturday matinee movie. The young star archeologist-adventurer, sent by his government (the U.S. of naturally) with museum curator Den-holm Elliott's help, is on a secret mission: beating the Nazis to the discovery of the Ark of the Covenant. A gold-encrusted chest, lined with silk, fragrant with incense, the Ark supposedly contained the broken tablets of the Ten Commandments brought by Moses down from the mountain.

It disappeared and speculation is that an Egyptian Pharaoh carried it to Tanis and buried it in a tomb called the Well of the Souls. And why do the Nazis, of all people, lust after it? So that armed with the Ark, Hitler will be recognized as the true Messiah as prophesied in the Old Testament. The Ark of the Covenant. The Temple of the Chachapoyan Warriors. The Staff of Ra.

The Well of the Souls. Crystal-encrusted staffs and riddles solved by light striking a model of the Pharaoh's lost city. We are swept back to a simpler age of rites and rituals: Saturday serials at the movies and ones on the radio with secret decoder rings and Ovaltine mugs; Jack, Doc and Reggie; Lash La Rue and Tailspin Tommy all spun together. Somehow it's not surprising to find George Lucas behind all this. "Raiders," like the "Star Wars" saga, glows with its love of earlier films.

There's a quick scene in Fellini's "City of Women" in which a whole row of young boys stare up at an enormous motion picture screen. As Fellini stages it, they are tucked up in their theater seats in undulating, row-long sheets of fabric that move like waves. It's as though they were in an enormous bed, their eyes glued to the screen while the waves rock them. It's that connection with the communion of moviegoing as a kid that has been Lucas' purest gift. Having apparently known it acutely, Lucas can transmit that boyish wonder with an adult's technical and creative mastery.

Now Lucas has backed off directing, which, one suspects, his innate shyness always made a painful experience for him. He is co-executive producer of as producer he chose Frank Marshall, closely associated with Walter Hill on two heavily action-oriented works, "The Driver" and "The Warriors." But Lucas contributed the story, which he and writer-director Philip Kaufman brainstormed until they had the elements they wanted. The '30s period. Nazis as villains. The idea of a serial hero.

And Nazi interest in the occult. As director, Lucas picked Steven Spielberg, whose films move like a brush fire and are at the same time an affectionate catalogue of film references. "Close Encounters" was a plum pudding of them from "North by Northwest" to "Pinocchio" and from Chuck Jones' Road Runner to Truffaut and "The Wild Child," with points in between. "Raiders" has these moments too. As Indiana falls into line behind a procession of German soldiers you almost expect to see the Cowardly Lion's tail waving bravely.

There is a Peter Lorre Nazi and faces photographed in the special effects ending like old horror movie shots, lit from below and menacing. But Spielberg -n If Wt jZr T- 4S V) 3 i a. ff ft s- I ating, a heroine who can outlast a Tibetan giant in a drinking contest. (You do begin to worry a little about Marion. There are supposed to be two more sequels cooking.

At this rate, she'll have a liver like a tea tray by the time she's 35, and we need her around.) As played by Karen Allen she has enormous feisty appeal and the stamina of a marathon runner. What sets Indiana apart from Ford's other swashbuckler, Han Solo, are his The chemistry seems right between Harrison Ford, above, and Karen Allen, right, in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," an adventure film set in the '30s. Kin WW.