1984 was a strange time for American musical films. The film musical hadn’t gone extinct; for the third year in a row, a film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score (essentially, for Best Original Song, not just Original Song or Original Score). But at the same time, the genre was changing with the emphasis on realism of the 1970s, the emphasis on spectacle of the 1980s, and the belated introduction of pop music. As a result, the summer of ’84 was alive with film scores, but also with a strong emphasis on traditional show tunes ( Muppets take over Manhattan(A conscious return to the old showbiz musicals.) And Dolly Parton, who may have been a consistent musical movie star in the previous generation, teamed up with Sylvester Stallone to RhinestoneA dance musical that’s like a mini summer sensation break in’ And it’s still playing Footlooseand a bizarre attempt to embody the spirit of rock and roll as a futuristic cult object. Streets of Fire.
The year’s biggest musical, which came out in July 1984, fell into that last category (or close to it). Purple Rain“The 1970s,” a hybrid of behind-the-scenes musical, concert film and precocious biopic about pop phenom Prince, won the Academy Award for Original Song Score that year, handily beating out the Muppets. Forty years later, Purple Rain The film feels unique yet influential, and perhaps most notable of all, it also feels like a creative evolution of the movie musical, even if many subsequent projects haven’t followed in its particular footsteps.
Praise Purple Rain The film’s boast of cinematic authenticity isn’t intended to glorify director, co-writer and co-editor Albert Magnoli at the expense of Prince, who, despite his multiple starring roles, exists outside the world of film and its soundtrack albums. Purple Rainis an ambitious work packed with Prince’s greatest songs — “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Darling Nikki” and the title song all appear, and are performed nearly in their entirety, in the film — but it’s entirely possible to make a connection with the album and its hits even if you know almost nothing about the film or Prince’s truly peculiar screen presence.
The character Prince plays Purple Rain Prince’s work seems to be about himself, but it’s not a self-congratulatory self-portrait, and it’s hard to gauge the extent to which it’s intended to be self-critical: surely an artist like Prince would be aware that the mercurial musician who fronted the resident band at Minneapolis rock club First Avenue is often portrayed as mercurial, moody, stubborn, misogynistic, and even abusive. Purple Rain The abuse is discussed but is so pervasive that it doesn’t feel like merely a product of the times, and Prince’s various female creative partners, Apollonia Kotero, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, are given ample screen time to air their grievances, but the film doesn’t offer much insight into these dynamics—it’s not a matter of representation not equaling support, but rather the unsupported simplicity of the depictions themselves, with Prince’s character clearly inheriting the abuse his father (Clarence Williams III) inflicted on his mother (Olga Karlatos).
This plot point highlights one of the many ways Prince endows himself with a childlike attitude throughout the film. Though he was in his mid-20s when he made the film, his character is simply called “The Kid.” He seems to live at home, even though he has a steady job as a musician, owns a good-looking motorcycle, and has a penchant for having sex in barns. All of this indicates that he’s ready to have his own place. In general, he speaks and acts with the expression of a 15-year-old, whether he’s talking sweetly with his eyes wide open, or when he’s pissing himself off, or when he’s flirting on the playground with Apollonia, an aspiring singer whom he’s vaguely mentoring. Honestly, The Kid doesn’t seem particularly ready to mentor anyone. The film seems to understand this, but it also has a somewhat murky and sometimes completely inexplicable relationship to the creative process in general. (Which songs were supposed to drive the First Avenue crowd wild, and why, are never made clear or explained, which is made all the more problematic by the fact that decades later, most of those songs sound like Prince classics.)
Some of these story and characterization issues are probably the fault of Magnoli, who never had a particularly prolific career (especially if you exclude Prince music videos from his filmography), but on a technical level, Magnoli is truly brilliant. Purple Rain is often stunningly beautiful in its look and technique. Not only does the opening song, “Let’s Go Crazy,” sparkle in stylized rock-club colors; Magnoli also edits character-introduction montages with a slightly off-kilter, unannounced rhythm to keep the audience on edge. Throughout the film, Magnoli and Prince seem to be trying to escape the limitations of narrative cinema by blending performance with cinematic drama, cutting performance to indulge in the latter, or focusing single-mindedly on performance. The film is not a traditionally integrated musical, but its best sequences have the audacity of a musical. Many ’80s musicals used their pop roots to inching actual filmmaking away from the imaginative leaps of form of the ’50s and ’60s. There’s a post-MTV feel to the edit, to be sure, but it’s just a way of wrapping concert footage safely into a familiar framework. Purple Rain They flow in and out of the film, often dominating it and creating a more unique viewing experience.
The idea that artists could adapt their own stories into films has been around for a while. Purple RainHowever, the success of this film likely contributed to subsequent works in the subgenre. 8 milesPrince himself starred in two more films, both of which he directed himself, but neither were as popular as this one, in which he was clearly a novice actor. Some musicians make an album work a creative magic that they can’t replicate in subsequent releases. Prince, who made nearly 40 studio albums over the course of his legendary career, had no such problem. Purple Rain It hasn’t peaked commercially yet. But in the movies, Purple Rain It needed to be a special kind of strange, fascinating, and sometimes jarring shock for the movie musical form.
Jesse Hassenger (Follow) A Brooklyn-based writer, she’s a regular contributor to AV Club, Polygon, The Week, and other publications, and also hosts a podcast. Click here for detailstoo.
