South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 146

6S Friday, Dec. 20, 1985 t-r C-Jt wWWl Fort Lauderdale NewsSun-Sentlnel ft' if v-. 'Purple' a moving adaptation of book By Candice Russell Film Writer Michael Douglas argues with ex-lover, played by Alyson Reed, in Chorus Line. 4 A Chorus Line' keeps spirit of stage musical Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple. IZoyb review Vt THE COLOR PURPLE A black woman in tha South atrugglaa to iurviva a lovalaaa marriaga.

Cradita: With Whoopi Goldbarg, Danny Giovaf, Oprah Winlray. Diractad by Stavan Spiaibarg. Writtan by Manno Mayjaa from tha Pulitzar Prlza-winning noa by Alica Walhar. if Violanca, coaraa languaga Poor fm Good EicoHont By Candice Russell Film Writer Usnh review kVi A CHORUS LINE Dancara audition for a Broadway musical. Cradita: With Michaal Douglaa, Audray Landara, Nicola Foaaa.

Diractad by Richard Attanborough. Writtan by Arnold Schulman from tha ataga play by Jamaa Kirfcwood and Nicholas Danta, concaivad by Michaal Bannatt fat Coaraa languaga Poor Fr Good Eicollwil To grow up poor, black and Southern, the victim of nothing more than an accident of birth, is the fate of Celie, the heroine of The Color Purple. Her ability to survive and outlive adversity, along with the other women in her family, is the basis for a most remarkable film. Based on Alice Walker's powerful Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title, The Color Purple onscreen doesn't match the experience of sitting alone with the book. But that matters little to the moviegoing masses anyway.

What counts is that the heart and soul of Walker's characters are preserved and given new life in the film version. Set in rural Georgia from 1909 to 1936, this beautifully told story deals with hard issues faced by black females. Incest, rape, oppression and prejudice are their lot. Celie suffers these injustices at the hands of her brutal father and needlessly cruel husband, Albert (Danny Glover), who marries her so that she can care for his many kids. He robs her of her sister Nettie's beloved company and hides the letters she writes Celie from Africa, so that Celie doubts whether she is alive.

Still she hopes. Albert brings home his honky-tonk lover Shug Avery (Margaret Avery) and installs her in the bedroom, with uncalculated consequences. She and Celie become friends. Lessons are learned about how to love, when to stand up for oneself, what battles are worth fighting. Ultimately The Color Purple is about the making of a self-respecting woman.

Menno Meyjes' economical screenplay summarizes the nearly tragic circumstances of Celie's own life and the means by which she rescues herself. There is the playful scene in which Nettie teaches Celie bow to read and spell by pinning pieces of paper with words on clothing, door frames, anywhere at all. And there is the violence from Albert that she accepts but never forgives. Few films this year have been so brilliantly acted as this one, which stands in the tradition of Sounder. Whoopi Goldberg, the comic actress who had a one-woman show on Broadway, is a cinematic find as Celie.

Her slow-shuffling, beaten-down character sees everything around her, does a slow burn over the years, and walks away from her abusive husband. It's a domestic call to arms of a very personal sort and the stuff of which indelible movie memories are made. Sensuous young dancers, dozens of them, go through their paces on a naked stage during an audition for a Broadway musical. The ones with the most style are asked to stay, while the others are eliminated. To win over the show's director, the lucky ones who remain are asked to talk about their lives in confessional fashion.

What could be simpler or more dramatic? A Chorus Line made Broadway history from such beginnings. The show, which is the longest-running musical of all time, is still running. And if you haven't seen it onstage, either in New York or elsewhere, the movie version directed by Richard Attenborough will doubtless seem impressive. Other people, however, are likely to be disappointed to one degree or another. Fans of the stage musical may fight the tendency to nitpick the conceptualization of the film, the songs it leaves out and replaces with others, and some of the casting.

Yet in spite of these reservations, the spirit of the piece remains intact. This voyeuristic drama is splashy, showy and fun, enough so as to blunt the movie's flaws and to permit some involvement with the lives and work of these unsung gypsies. Besides, the knockout choreography by Jeffrey Hornaday should set pulses racing, whether the dancers move in one hypnotic, machinelike mass or step out of the line for star-turn solos. Unfortunately, that involvement isn't as strong as in the original stage version. The characters were more individualized onstage and more memorable.

In the movie they blend together like anonymous shadows, perhaps a fitting metaphor for the ghostly toil of being in a chorus line. The attractive Michael Douglas must have had laryngitis after playing the role of Zach, the show's director who barks orders to the confused, nervous dancers. The movie tries to humanize him, to make him less godlike by bringing him into full view. Screenwriter Arnold Schulman, who had nothing to do with the original stage version, tries to suggest Celie learns from observing people like her daughter-in-law, Sofia, played with unswerving pride by Oprah Winfrey. She's the amply built woman who won't toady to white people and is pathetically humbled when they bring her down.

There's a fiery, life-embracing spirit in Shug, and actress Avery reveals it best when she sings the blues in a juke joint in the woods. A couple of small flaws must be mentioned. The narrative advances by leaps of as much as 14 years, making the moviegoer wonder about the intervening time. The makeup used to suggest that passage is sometimes applied with too heavy a band, especially in the case of Sofia. That the film is directed by Steven Spielberg may come as a surprise to moviegoers who forget that he made the adult film The Sugarland Express.

He has been toiling in kiddieland ever since, to the official ignorance of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. With The Color Purple, he achieves what he wanted not only a fair reading of the book's essence via a superb cast, but legitimacy within the film industry. He may just take home an Academy Award for Best Director next spring. The exquisite cinematography by Allen Daviau plays a key role in the effect of many scenes. One image in particular, of the two sisters as girls (then later as women) playing patty-cake in a field of purple wildflowers, expresses the innocent bond of love that sustains Celie through impossibly difficult times.

The Color Purple is that rarity in American films a faithful adaptation of a stirring book. To watch it is to laugh and cry with characters that you'll not soon forget. Zach's failed live-in relationship with a dancer named Cassie. She shows up late for the audition and he spends the movie rejecting her pleas to try out with the younger dancers. The film lacks the immediacy of the drama that one felt so keenly in the theater.

If ever there was a show that depended on the intimate connection between actors and audience, A Chorus Line is it. The film necessarily loses that bond, then compounds the loss with distracting flashbacks in the relationship of Cassie and Zach (at least they're brief flashbacks blink and you'll miss them). Alyson Reed's Cassie is competent But the role demands a dancer whose execution of each step distinguishes her from the pack and Reed isn't that dancer. She's all hard edges and bravado, which makes one wonder how she and Zach (who are like two cacti) overcame their similarities to ever fall in love. Gregg Burge, an eye-popping dancer featured in a new song for the film Surprise, Surprise, is a standout.

Audrey Landers brings comical punch to the number about a surgically improved anatomy. A Chorus Line is a noble, at times highly entertaining attempt to bring a hopelessly stagebound show to film. Considering the limitations of the medium, it's almost as good as it could be. Those who never saw it onstage stand to enjoy it most because they won't, know what they have missed..