The Color Purple

General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 2
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Running Time	148 minutes	Commentary Tracks	None
RSDL/Flipper	Flipper (75:35)	Other Extras	Cast & Crew Biographies Production Notes
Start Up	Movie	Cast & Crew
Region	4	Director	Steven Spielberg
Distributor	Warner Brothers	Starring	Danny Glover Adolph Caesar Margaret Avery Rae Dawn Chong Whoopi Goldberg
RRP	$29.95

    Celie is married off soon after to a brutal man, whom she refers to as Mister (Danny Glover). He regularly abuses and beats her. Nettie comes to stay with Celie because their father cannot keep his hands off her, but is thrown off Mister's land when she refuses his advances. Celie and Nettie are parted, but Nettie promises to write.

    Celie grows to adulthood (Whoopi Goldberg), accepting of her lot in life. Presently, one of Mister's sons, Harpo (Willard Pugh) meets and marries Sofia (Oprah Winfrey). They have a tempestuous relationship with Sofia dominating. Celie's advice? "Beat her." Sofia leaves Harpo.

    We next meet Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), Mister's mistress. Unlike Celie, Shug dominates Mister, whom she calls by his real name, Albert. Shug comes to live with them. It says a lot for how desperate Celie's situation is in life when she simply accepts this arrangement without a whimper of protest.

    Celie gradually comes to know herself, and to have confidence in herself, with the help of Shug who becomes a great friend and confidante. A great turning point in Celie's life occurs when she receives a letter from Nettie, after all the years of not hearing from her. It turns out that Albert has been hiding Nettie's letter for many long years.

    The Color Purple is fundamentally about the growth of Celie as a person from her initial degraded state into a strong and confident woman. Several other women help her along the way. As we go along with her in her journey through life, we are shocked, angry, sad, and ultimately delighted with how things turn out for her. This is a very powerful story which is told brilliantly.

Video

    The transfer was generally sharp and clear at all times. Very occasionally, I noticed a little bit of film grain noise.
Shadow detail was very good.

    The colour was wonderful to look at. Vibrant, crisp, clear colours are often present, as are drab earth tones. The colour saturation was spot on throughout.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts were very few and far between, and consisted of a little bit of image shimmer here and there, and the odd vertical skip at reel changes. One of the first shots of Africa, showing the orange sunset, was a little wobbly, but I felt that this was more than likely on the original negative rather than a transfer artefact. Film artefacts were few and far between, though there were more present than on pristine new transfers.

    This DVD is a FLIPPER. The side change is between Chapters 21 and 22, at 75:35. This is as good a spot as any for this break, but as always, RSDL formatting would have been preferred.

Audio

    Dialogue was always clear and easy to understand, something that is very important with a dialogue driven movie such as this one.

    The musical score (Quincy Jones) is frequently present, and covers a wide range of musical styles. Towards the end of the movie, I heard the odd bit of symphonic music go a little out of tune here and there - it sounded like a little bit of wow may have affected the tapes that were used for the audio transfer, presumably at some early analogue stage in the mastering process.

     The surround channels were frequently utilized for the music and for frequent ambience. I did not hear any specific split surround effects, but this is one of the better 5.1 remixes that I have listened to. Many remixes to 5.1 sound more like a 3.0 remix, this one is at least a 4.0 remix. The mix was very good at enveloping you in the on screen action.

    The .1 channel was used to enhance the music, but didn't need to work all that hard.

    Two theatrical trailers are present on this DVD. They are presented with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 16x9 enhanced and with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, though they actually sounded like a very muffled optical mono track.

    Reasonably extensive cast and crew biographies round off the extras on this disc.

    The video quality is remarkably good for the film's age, and there are no significant problems with it.

    The audio quality was also remarkably good, and surprisingly enveloping considering the film's vintage.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Michael Demtschyna
12th December 1998