An online account recently showcased a few seconds of movie magic from Raiders of the Lost Ark, showing one of the tricks of the trade that can happen when a director knows audiences will be too caught up in the moment to scrutinize what’s happening in minute detail.“If adventure has a name…it must be Indiana Jones,” was the famous tagline for the second film in the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The tagline perfectly sums up all the films, including the first in the series, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford all stepped up with all the tricks of the trade at their disposal to deliver an all-time classic movie.Most fans know the genesis of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sitting on a beach one day, Spielberg had expressed interest in directing a James Bond movie to his friend, Lucas, who replied that he had a better idea in mind, then proceeded to describe the rough outline of what would become Indiana Jones. After casting—in which star Ford was nearly second choice to Magnum P.I.'s Tom Selleck and Animal House's Tim Matheson—they began the shoot. In Tunisia, the cast got dysentery, which led to the famous scene where Ford shot an Arab swordsman instead of fighting him. It also led to a scene of the Nazi villain Toht being replaced with what appears to be only his hat and coat, pointed out by All The Right Movies
Ronald Lacey, who plays Toht, was a man prone to fits of sickness through his vast and varied acting career, which would leave him in various states of weight gain and weight loss. The duress of shooting under such harsh conditions for the Egypt scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark may have been why Lacey wasn't present and had to be replaced by what was thought by fans to only be his costume for a scene in which René Belloq (Paul Freeman) and the Nazis express frustration that Indiana Jones has escaped with the Ark of the Covenant in hand. However, the son of the stuntman for Toht revealed that it was his father, Peter Diamond (who was also in episodes of Doctor Who and Star Wars), crouching down to hide his face during the scene.
Using that ephemeral thing known as “movie magic,” which consists of real techniques such as matte paintings for extending backgrounds or special effects to pull off impossible visuals, or even just quick fixes at the moment to take advantage of the daylight and keep filming on schedule, Spielberg replaced Toht in the scene with his hat and jacket. He did it thinking that audiences would be so caught up in the finale of the horseback/truck chase scene that they wouldn’t notice that one of the actual villains wasn’t present, but only a stuntman ducked down in the key pieces of Toht's costume that made up his iconic silhouette.
Spielberg, the master director that he is, was right. It wasn’t until years later, with home video releases, that audiences noticed this bit of fun trickery in the first Indiana Jones film.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is streaming on Paramount Plus.
Source: All The Right Movies/Twitter