The Color Purple [DVD]

Delivered today .. watching now .. and incredibly astonished by the DVD quality considering the year of the release of this film, I am quite satisfied as I now watch this masterpiece unfold before me in such vivid quality. The last time that I had watched this film it was on some old crummy VHS tape, you know .. the ones with the scratchy video lines scrolling from top to bottom every 15 minutes, and in a crowded room of people at that. It's really nice at this age to sit down and enjoy one of Spielberg's greatest stories brought to such a high quality DVD.The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of women of color in the southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content, particularly in terms of violence.Celie, the protagonist and narrator, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in the South. She starts writing letters to God because her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once. Celie gave birth to a girl, whom her father presumably killed in the woods. Celie has a second child, a boy, whom her father also abducts. Celie's mother becomes ill and dies. Alphonso brings home a new wife, and continues to abuse Celie.Celie and her bright, pretty younger sister, Nettie, learn that a man known only as Mr.___ wants to marry Nettie. Mr.___ has a mistress named Shug Avery, a sultry lounge singer whose photograph fascinates Celie. Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, and instead offers Mr.___ Celie, who he refers to as ugly, as his bride. Mr.___ eventually accepts the offer, forcing Celie into a difficult and abusive marriage. Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie's house. Mr.___ still desires Nettie, and when he advances on her, she leaves. Promising to write, Celie assumes her silence means her death ( " 'Nothing but death can keep me from it' she never write")Mr.___'s sister Kate feels sorry for Celie, and tells her to fight back against Mr.___ rather than submit to his abuses. Harpo, Mr.___'s son, falls in love with a large, spunky girl named Sofia. Shug Avery comes to town to sing at a local bar, but Celie is not allowed to go see her. Sofia gets pregnant and marries Harpo. Celie is amazed by Sofia's defiance in the face of Harpo's and Mr.___'s attempts to treat Sofia as an inferior. Harpo, kinder and gentler than his father, still assumes this means he is doing something wrong and under the advice of Mr.___ and a momentarily jealous Celie, attempts to beat Sofia into submission. Unlike Celie, however, Sofia fights back.Shug falls ill and Mr.___ takes her into his house. Shug is initially rude to Celie ("You show is ugly"), but the two women become friends as Celie takes charge of nursing Shug. Celie finds herself infatuated with Shug and attracted to her sexually.Frustrated by Harpo's consistent attempts to subordinate her, Sofia moves out, taking her children with her. Several months later, Harpo opens a juke joint where Shug sings nightly. Celie grows confused over her feelings toward Shug.Shug decides to stay when she learns that Mr.___ beats Celie when Shug is away. Shug and Celie's relationship grows intimate, and Shug begins to ask Celie questions about sex. Sofia returns for a visit and promptly gets in a fight with Harpo's new girlfriend, Squeak. In town one day, the mayor's wife, Miss Millie, asks Sofia to work as her maid. Sofia replies with a sassy "Hell no!" When the mayor slaps Sofia for her "insubordination", Sofia returns the blow, knocking the mayor down, for which she is sent to jail. Squeak's attempts to get Sofia released are futile, resulting in her being raped. Sofia is sentenced to work for 12 years as the mayor's maid, though she is eventually released from jail six months early.Despite her new marriage, at Shug's return visit, she instigates a sexual relationship with Celie, and the two frequently share the same bed. One night Shug asks Celie about her sister and Celie tells her she assumes Nettie is dead because she'd promised to write Celie but never did. Shug helps Celie recover letters from Nettie that Mr.___ has been hiding from her for decades. Overcome with emotion, Celie reads the letters in order, wondering how to keep herself from killing Mr.___.The letters indicate that Nettie befriended a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, and accompanied them to Africa to do ministry work. Samuel and Corrine have two adopted children, Olivia and Adam, the two children Celie believed dead. Nettie and Corrine have become close friends, but Corrine, noticing that her adopted children resemble Nettie, wonders if Nettie and Samuel have a secret past. Increasingly suspicious, Corrine tries to limit Nettie's role within her family.Nettie becomes disillusioned with her missionary experience, as she finds the Africans self-centered and obstinate. Corrine becomes ill with a fever. Nettie asks Samuel to tell her how he adopted Olivia and Adam. Based on Samuel's story, Nettie realizes that the two children are actually Celie's biological children (whom Alphonso, her stepfather, abducted), alive after all. Nettie also learns that Alphonso is actually only Nettie and Celie's stepfather, not their biological father, who was a store owner whom white men lynched because they resented his success. Alphonso told Celie and Nettie he was their real father because he wanted to inherit the house and property that was once their mother's.Nettie confesses to Samuel and Corrine that she is in fact their children's biological aunt. The gravely ill Corrine refuses to believe Nettie. Later, Corrine dies, finally having accepted Nettie's story and reconciled thereto just before her death. Meanwhile, Celie visits Alphonso, who confirms Nettie's story, admitting that he is only the sisters' stepfather. Celie begins to lose some of her faith in God, but Shug explains to her a new view of the Divine, one which places Celie within a loved creation. "God love everything you love, and a whole mess of stuff you don't". 'I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere, and don't notice it' 'What it do when it pissed off?' 'I don't know. Make something else, I guess. People think pleasing God is all God cares about, but any fool living can see it always trying to please us back."Realizing that Mr.___ has hidden Nettie's loving letters from her, and beginning to re imagine herself in the new view of God and of creation that Shug has taught her, she decides to leave Mr.___ with Shug and Squeak, leaving a 'curse' behind her on Mr.___ "Everything you done to me, already done to you...every lick you hit me you will suffer twice" and finally asserts her own dignity as a human being against the abuses she has suffered "I'm poor, black, I may be ugly and I can't cook but I'm here."At this point, the letters change from being addressed to God, to being addressed to Nettie. She also begins to 'sign off' the letters with Amen.The entire movie in my opinion is just incredible, and I can't thank you enough.Keepsake!

Good movie

I couldn't believe my husband had never seen this movie! It's so good, I bought it just to show him. I cry every time. Love it.

Saw this as a kid and I learned so much about how to treat others. Hoping future generations I show this to will realize how things were back then.

I saw this movie when I was a child, bought it on DVD and digital. Still a favorite.

Still an extraordinary movie. This DVD arrived in excellent condition, both sides, to my surprise! Brought me to tears, once again.

Love it

I'd never seen the whole movie so I rented it. I want to see the new one so I figured I'd better watch the old one first. It was very good and interesting. I never knew what these poor girls/women had to go through back then. So sad and educational.

Avec Whoopi Goldberg à ses débuts, un film qui démontre la réalité crue d'une époque trouble. Très satisfaite de cet achat. Merci.

Merci beaucoup

Classique, chef d'oeuvre de Spielberg. Magnifique

Sehr guter Film, gehört meiner Meinung nach in jedem Sammlung mit einer spitzen Rolle für Woopy Goldberg

Fantastic movie