The Color Purple

The Color Purple is an amazing, well-thought out piece about a young African American woman, Celie, who is raped and impregnated by her father. Her father gives her children away, and is separated from her sister when her father forces her to marry an older black man named Albert and/or Mister.

The Color Purple was originally a novel written by Alice Walker, but was made into a film in 1985 with the help of director Steven Spielberg. Whoopi Goldberg does an incredible job transforming into the quiet and timid character of Celie. Daniel Glover also does a nice job taking on the role of the dark and controlling Albert/Mister. Participating in her first film, Oprah Winfrey does a fine job adapting to Harpo's (Willard E. Pugh) strong willed wife, Sofia

The beginning of The Color Purple takes place in the winter of 1909, a time when whites and blacks did not always agree. An example of the racial differences taking place in the dialogue would be when the mayor's wife (a white woman), asks Sofia if she and her children would come work for her. Sofia is a proud black woman, and says "Hell no." The mayor slaps her for speaking that way to his wife, and Sofia reacts by punching him, and is then sent to jail for eight years. In the end Sofia is forced to work for the mayor and his wife anyway.


A shot that appears many times throughout The Color Purple is the focus on a character's shadow. When Celie and Nettie are younger there is a shot where they are gossiping about Mister and the shot is focused on their shadows on the wall, through the door frame. Then later the camera follows young Celie when she is reading out loud to herself, cuts out for a moment, and then when it cuts back you hear a much more mature voice as it becomes older Celie, (Whoopi Goldberg).


Diegetic sounds seem to fuse together throughout this film. When Celie and Nettie are younger, they are playing a hand clapping game, and those sounds fade into the clatter of horses hoove beats on the road. While Celie is reading Nettie's letter from Africa the sounds of Celie's surroundings in America blend with those made from Nettie's surroundings in Africa.

Toward the end of the film there was one scene that seemed to be a mistake in continuity editing. The camera is following a group of people walking into a church, then when the shot cuts to the other end of the axis of action the people have already stopped walking. This was fairly distracting for me.

Overall I would say that this is a very good film, and I would recommend it to those who enjoy a more serious, but well-crafted film.