Tools of Characterization
Characterization in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Clothing
So there's this hat…
Raiders of the Lost Ark features the most famous piece headgear in all of moviedom, and with it comes an easy in-road to Indy's character. The filmmakers wanted Indy to look good in silhouette (seriously, count the number of times it happens), but also distinctive so no one would mistake him for anything else. The solution was the hat: a Stetson fedora with a narrower brim than most cowboy hats, but more depth and weight than derbies or porkpie hats.
It's come to represent Indy's rough-and-tumble lifestyle. The rest of his ensemble follows suit: battered leather jacket, work boots, khaki shirt and pants, and roughly coiled bullwhip. This man doesn't need to make a fashion statement: He's there to do a job and he needs clothes that can endure the strain. And strain there is aplenty. As he says to Marion:
"It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."
His roughness stands in stark contrast to the bad guys, who are always well-pressed and clean-shaven. Belloq, in particular, is always neat and tidy. Contrast his look in the Peruvian jungle—skin clean, face shaved, clothes fresh off the rack at Banana Republic—with Indy's sweaty, dusty, I-just-ran-through-a-freaking-big-spider-web ensemble. Beyond drawing a visual difference between them, their clothes help emphasize one of the big, dramatic conceits of the story: Belloq steals the fruits of other people's hard-earned labor without doing any of the work. It also pushes Indy's scruffy underdog credentials, making his rough-and-tumble khakis look even rougher and tumbly-er in comparison.
Belloq continues that trend when he gets to the desert. His sporty white coat and hat make him look like he's hanging out at the Louvre making snooty comments about the Manets instead of wringing the pit sweat out of his clothes like everyone else around him. (It goes without saying that Indy spends all his time in the desert looking like forty miles of bad road.)
That trend doesn't change until the very end, but even then, Belloq's clothes tell us something about him and about the story being told around him. If you follow the instructions in the Torah, you'd end up with an outfit very similar to Belloq's: Leviticus 16 for those keeping track at home.
This falls under the "reading stereo instructions" mistake he makes. He's dressing in the right manner to open the Ark, he's ready to show God that he's worthy, but he hasn't done anything that merits donning the robes of a High Priest. He's trying to fool God with his outfit, and if you think about that, it's pretty darn deluded. He might as well have worn a pair of fake Groucho Marx glasses and a cigar: The Almighty would have smote him just as hard.
Actions
This is an action movie, so one expects to see a certain amount of characterization in actions. But beyond the basic good guys vs. bad guys stuff, the characters' actions say a huge amount about who they are. The Nazis, for example, conduct the dig as a military operation. They partition things off, browbeat the natives to do the heavy work, and stride around like they own the place the whole time. "It is as if the Pharaohs have returned," Sallah grumbles about them.
Of course, all of that produces rather crude results (as Belloq says "you would use a bulldozer to find a china cup") and while it does the job, it cares nothing for all the things and people it destroys along the way.
Now contrast that with Indy's actions. He keeps things on the down-low, disguising himself as an Arab and moving around unseen rather than screaming, "Hey numbskulls, I'm over here!" When the dig starts, he uses only a small group of helpers, and they do their best to avoid attracting any attention. When Indy has to go bold, as he does when chasing the truck, he counts on surprise more than force, and he'd much prefer to slip away in a tramp steamer rather than a military convoy. That also implies that he'll treat whatever he finds with respect, unlike the Nazis, who are so busy running after the prize that they don't notice what they're trampling in the process.
In short, his actions make him the plucky underdog, standing up for underdogs everywhere, while his adversaries are more of the "smash them all and sort through the wreckage" types. That makes it pretty easy to tell the good guys from the bad, and we don't even have to hear a word they say.
Occupation
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a pretty darn direct movie (though "direct" isn't the same thing as "shallow," as we hope you'll agree). That means that someone's occupation can become a very quick shorthand to explain their personality. Plug in the job and the character quickly follows.
For starters, there's Indy: a professor of archaeology whose rival, Belloq, is clearly cut from similar cloth. That automatically lends us some clues about what kind of people they are. They're smart—after all, schools don't just hand out PhDs in Crackerjack boxes—and with their education comes a certain amount of wisdom. At the same time, they're both kind of mercenaries, conducting semi-legal activities in the name of the almighty dollar. "Archaeology is our religion, but we have both fallen from the purer faith," Belloq intones, which indicates that they definitely play on the dark side of the street.
The other villains make their personalities known almost entirely by occupation. The militaristic Dietrich always makes sure his uniform is tidy, while a sadist like Toht naturally belongs in the Gestapo. Indy's buddy Marcus is the flip side of their coin: A museum curator is the perfect job for a gentle, quiet, orderly man. Regardless of the character, we get a good impression of them just by learning what they do for a living.
Speech and Dialogue
The characters are never subtle about their intentions here: They state them pure and clear, for the whole world to hear. You need to show us that Belloq is ambitious? Have him seethe about the Ark being "a radio for speaking to God!" Want to see how Indy now values Marion more than the Ark? Just have him say, "All I want is the girl." The Nazi dialogue is usually threatening and unemotional, unless that emotion is anger or disgust.
The subtlety lies in when they say these things, not what they say. If we pay attention, we can chart their growth—what's important to them and how that changes (or doesn't change) as they all get closer to that ultimate prize waiting in the Well of Souls.