The Color Purple, by Steven Spielberg, is in urgent need of reassessment (critical)
This historical drama is not the American filmmaker’s fan favorite. However, it is far from deserving this bad reputation.
Arte will rebroadcast The color purpleof Steven Spielbergtonight, followed by a documentary on Sidney Poitier already visible for free on the channel’s website. First recommend this evening combining cinema and American history.
The color purple follows two sisters, Célie (Whoopi Goldberg) and Nettie (Akosua Busia), and their black family during the first half of the 20th century in the American South.
In 1985, when he came out at the time of the filming ofAND And Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Steven Spielberg operates a 360 degree turn with this purple color where he turns into a director of committed historical dramas revisiting a particularly painful moment in recent American history.
Great underrated film of his filmography, The color purple sits prominently in the ranking of the best Spielbergs of First : “A pivotal, decisive moment, since it is here and now that Spielberg officially becomes a director of historical dramas, and no longer just a entertainer with cap. Adaptation of the hardcore novel by the Pulitzerized Alice Walker, the film systematically refuses the frontal violence of a story full of incest, rape, humiliation and corporal punishment. By replacing them with pure visual finds, based on symbolism and the off-screen, Spielberg takes the risk of a certain distancing. Except that there is a romantic verve here, an ultra assertive Dickensian ambition, which encourages us to watch the film not as an identity fire or a way of the cross in the America of violent rednecks, but indeed as the fairy tale of pure passion between two sisters.
A singular, highly subversive angle of attack, which chooses to re-enchant everything without evading the blows. Huge formal prowess, striking fresco, melody saturated with colors, love and cries, this unloved film needs to be reassessed urgently.“.
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At the death of Tina Turner, last May, a confession interview from 1986 on a television set in Italy emerged. She explained there to have been the first choice of Steven Spielberg for the role of Célie. She had refused, the plot bringing back too many bad memories of her own life, when she was under the influence of her violent husband Ike Turner.
“You know, I always talk too much in the press about my life, so the idea to make a movie out of it? It’s dragging me down considered the singer and actress of Mad Max 3. I try to forget the past because it’s all over. It’s over. This part of my life is behind me, I do not intend to play a role that will remind me of what I have already experienced. I believe that Steve understood that I couldn’t do it for this reason, I made it clear to him what it meant to me”.
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