Steven Spielberg added the 1985 film The Color Purple to his already expansive film resume. His mission was to make a faithful and honorable adaptation to the book the feature was based on. But there was one scene from The Color Purple that Spielberg was scared to touch.
Steven Spielberg faced some criticism for directing ‘The Color Purple’
Spielberg’s The Color Purple received much praise from critics upon its release. It scored big at the box-office, and received several Oscar nominations that included Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress. Spielberg decided to adapt Alice Walker’s acclaimed novel after being moved by the piece.
“I’m completely reactive to the stuff that I read. The book was given to me, and I read it, and I was deeply touched,” Spielberg said in a 2011 interview with Entertainment Weekly.
The film didn’t face its fair share of criticism, though. Much of the push-back against the film came from those who felt the book should’ve been adapted by a Black filmmaker. Others believed Spielberg may have softened the material, a sentiment which the director somewhat agreed with.
“I have always copped to that. I made the movie I wanted to make from Alice Walker’s book. Alice was on the set a lot of the time and could have always stepped forward to say, ‘You know, this is too Disney. This is not the way I envisioned the scene going down.’ She was very supportive during filmmaking, and so I felt that we were doing a good job adapting her novel,” he said.
Steven Spielberg once named ‘The Color Purple’ scene he couldn’t shoot
Spielberg acknowledged that he took certain liberties with some of the film’s characters. The novel’s two protagonists, Celie and Shug Avery, had a deep and sexual relationship in the book. But Spielberg greatly paired down their relationship in his interpretation.
“In that sense, perhaps I was the wrong director to acquit some of the more sexually honest encounters between Shug and Celie, because I did soften those. I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that,” he said.
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One of the scenes from the book Spielberg omitted was a moment where Shug exposes herself bare to Celie. This was supposed to demonstrate Celie’s sexual growth in the story. But as a man, Spielberg couldn’t figure out how to approach the scene.
“Any woman director would have done that brilliantly,” Spielberg once told the Los Angeles Times. “And I was afraid of it. I didn’t know how to direct actors to do that.”
Alice Walker didn’t feel Steven Spielberg explored the relationships in ‘The Color Purple’ enough
Spielberg not showing enough of Celie and Shug’s relationship was a criticism that the book’s author agreed with. If Walker was behind the camera, she admitted she might have done things slightly differently.
“It’s just that if I had directed it, of course their love life would have been much more vibrant. But, 15 years later or however many years it’s been now, when I look at it, I think he did a beautiful, very sensitive job of depicting the depths of their relationship. Because what he manages to do is, he brings in the sweetness. And that is so fine,” Walker once said according to Black Film.
Despite some of the criticism, Spielberg wouldn’t change anything about the Celie and Shug relationship if given the chance.
“That kiss is consistent with the tonality, from beginning to end, of The Color Purple that I adapted,” he said.
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