Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece scandalously ignored by the Oscars in 1986 despite its eleven citations, “The Color Purple” was the subject of numerous criticisms, some of which were directly addressed to the filmmaker…
The story of two sisters, Celie and Nettie, set in the Deep South of the United States. They were separated when they were teenagers because of the brutality of “Monsieur”, a farmer who bought Celie more than he married her. As the long and difficult years pass, Celie endures the worst vexations and suffers her master’s intolerant temper…
Released in the United States just a year after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it’s an understatement to say that The Color Purple by Steven Spielberg hit very hard. Having until then the image of a filmmaker above all attached to making blockbusters and family films, Spielberg surprised his audience with this adult story, very hard and moving, carrying an emotional charge to split the stones in two. A story written by Alice Walker, the first African-American woman in history to be crowned with the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for her book, published a year earlier.
Carried at arm’s length by the film’s revelation, Whoopi Goldberg, who also won a Golden Globe for Best Actress, the film collected nearly 100 million dollars at the worldwide Box Office. But the work also had a rather thwarted fate.
Made Oscar history, but not for the right reasons
He made Oscar history, but not for the right reasons. Collecting no less than 11 citations in major categories at the 58th ceremony in 1986, he did not win a single statuette. Spielberg was not even nominated for Best Director, which angered him. We had to go back to 1977 with the film Le Tournant de la vie, which had been cited in 10 categories without winning a single award, to find such humiliation.
Alice Walker also had a complicated relationship with the film. If she co-signed the screenplay of the film and appreciated Spielberg, even attended many days of filming, she was also worried about the result to come, fearing a betrayal of her work.
The thing is, over time, she ended up enjoying the movie, which she didn’t when it came out. In an interview she gave to NBC for the 30th anniversary of the film, she declared that she even preferred the musical adaptation of her work, which was produced in 2005.
Warner Bros.
Spielberg was also attacked. Some critics denied him the right to make a film about such a subject, on the grounds that he was not African American and therefore could not understand the deep drama of Alice Walker’s narrative.
“Most of the criticism came from directors who felt we had overlooked them and it should have been a black director telling a black story. That was the main criticism” said the filmmaker in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2011.
Another criticism -an artistic choice here- regarding his film was the way it softened the lesbian relationship between the characters of Shug Avery (Margaret Avery) and Celie. “The other criticism was that I toned down the book. I made the movie I wanted to make from Alice Walker’s book. Alice was on set a lot and could always have come forward and said, ‘ You know, it’s too Disney. This is not how I imagined the scene to unfold.
She was very supportive during filming, so I felt we were doing a good job adapting her novel. There were certain things in the relationship [lesbienne] between Shug Avery and Celie which were finely detailed in Alice’s book, but which I didn’t think I could put in if I wanted to get a PG-13 rating. And I was shy about it.
In that sense, maybe I was the wrong director to bring up those intimate relationships between Shug and Celie, because I softened them. I took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and reduced it in a sequence to just a kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that.”