I have a faint recollection of reading that a scene was filmed for Raiders of the Lost Ark where a sympathetically portrayed German soldier was ordered to kill a hostage by his Nazi superior. This scene was never used. Can anyone confirm my recollection?
1 Answer
There was such a scene
..although it never made it into the final production cut.
There's a list of deleted scenes which includes
Sallahs' Execution
With Indy and Marion left to suffocate in the Well of the Souls the Germans decide that Sallah should be executed. A young German soldier was supposed to carry out the dirty job but things changed when the later started having second thoughts. A German youth vacationing in Tunisia had been hired for the part of the young soldier. The funny thing is that this inexperienced young man managed to express brilliantly the moral dilemma of a young soldier forced to decide whether or not to kill a harmless stranger; this is the business of foreign wars, and this unknown German boy was able to convey it as well as any actor.
The result was beyond description, with this German student playing an intensely moving and emotional scene, making David Wisniewitz and Karen Allen call it the greatest moment since the film began. Spielberg said the bitter truth was that brilliant and memorable though the scene was, it would probably end up on the cutting-room floor because it was just too long. So it did.
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Is there a possibility that since it's not very Spielberg style, he removed it because it showed humanity from a german soldier, and even more so being so well represented by the young german boy. Commented Jul 13, 2023 at 17:53