Purple Rain

Prince turns Minneapolis clubs into a full-length pop film

The Kid hits First Avenue at full volume. Albert Magnoli’s Purple Rain, released in July 1984, follows a Minneapolis musician through a violent household, a rival named Morris Day, and a singer called Apollonia. On paper it is a rise-and-fall backstage drama. On screen the songs do most of the directing. Prince and the Revolution already work with the timing of a filmed show.

Music carries the story whenever the dialogue thins. Let’s Go Crazy opens the club as both a sermon and a joke. In The Beautiful Ones, Prince crawls across the stage floor, and the camera leaves the mess alone. When Doves Cry, built without a bass line, with Prince playing most of the parts himself, still sounds bare next to the rest of the album. Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman are not scenery. In the film, as in the band, they are the players who push him to let other hands onto the songs. The title track, with its long guitar solo at the close, is filmed slowly, with the crowd close. People in the club are crying during the song, and the script does not stop to explain the tears.

Morris Day, Jerome Benton, and The Time keep the picture from drowning in its own drama. They are funny, sharp, and local, a reminder that the Minneapolis scene was a competition, not a one-man show. The domestic scenes are clumsier: a father who hits, a son who repeats the gesture, a redemption that arrives because the third act needs one. The film has little restraint. That is the pulp, and it is also how direct the picture stays. Darling Nikki would soon be waved by parents who wanted warning stickers on records. Prince had already put the warning in the lyric and danced anyway.