Music Month: Purple Rain (Dir Albert Magnoli, 1h 51m, 1984)

Whilst the invention of the music video itself is a hotly debated topic, with everyone from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody to the Beatles' films of the mid 1960s to Mick Jagger's turn with "Memo from Turner" midway through psychedelic identity swap/gangster movie, Performance (1969), all of these tend to be to cover a single song, a single piece of music, or a short medley, held together by a flimsy narrative. At the other end of the scale, of course, there is the full blown cinematic crystalisation of the concept album into cinematic form. The Wall. Tommy. Quadrophenia. Films in short where an entire double album is given lavish, visually striking and occasionally iconic status as a visual as well as musical document. 

Between the two fall a strange breed of music videos, either given length, budget, or both. There is of course, the video album, where each song on the album gets its own music video-whilst pioneered by Blondie for their album Eat to the Beat in 1979, it has subsequently been the foray of artists and bands as far apart as Beyoncé and Metallica. And then there are the films that sit uneasily between categories. Kanye West's Runaway, for example, is more a narrative piece, the would-be auteur using a handful of the lesser marketed songs from his 2010 high-point My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, as a musical vehicle to further and embellish the narrative. Nightwish's Imaginerium, meanwhile, intertwines the Finnish metal band's album of the same name onto a Gothic and baroque tale of memory and loss.

And then there is Purple Rain, arguably the high point of the late Prince's musical career, certainly the high point of his cinematic career, a striking quasi-autobiographical document that at much depicts the then towering musical figure of Prince as a live performer, and the sound of his beloved home-town of Minneapolis as it does tell a coherent story. With it, of course, comes its soundtrack, and some of the best material Prince ever made as a musician, and the woodenness of the acting, the weakness of the narrative, and the surprisingly small scale for an artist whose ambition was seemingly limitless, is a small price to pay for seeing him perform them, and their existence as a striking piece of musical cinema.

By 1983, Prince has arrived, from a record contract at 19 to become, by his fifth album, 1999 (1982), a Grammy Nominee, one of the first black artists ever to be played on MTV, and one of the most famous artists in America. Prince, of course, wants more. During contract negotiations with his manager, Robert Cavallo, an ultimatum arrives. Prince wants a movie. Most studios balk at the idea of a musician led film, and in desperation, or perhaps seeing the qualities of his protege more than anyone else in the business, Cavallo takes a risk and decides to produce it himself. At first, the film seems to go nowhere-the original script is overly dark, and Cavallo's first choice for director, James Foley (as well known for directing Glengarry Glenn Ross as the two Fifty Shades sequels) passes on it, handing it off to his editor. After pitching a revised version, the editor, Albert Magnoli is promptly hired

From here, Purple Rain develops rapidly, its initially dark script cut down to a more palatable and more urbane film, and much of Minneapolis's musical scene essentially brought in to play larger than life versions of themselves, from rival band The Time to Prince's backing band, The Revolution, whilst Prince casts a relative unknown, Apollonia Kotero, to play against him as his girlfriend and eventual musical rival. There's just one problem. The film, at least in the eyes of Warner Bros, who agree to distribute it, is outrageous-an outrage that will follow the film's soundtrack all the way to the US Senate in the form of "Darling Nikki", and in part launch the Parents Music Resource Center, headed by Tipper Gore, and eventually lead to the creation of the "Parent Advisory" sticker for albums. It's only after music executive Howard Bloom, publicist for artists as far apart as Kiss and Bob Marley steps in that Warner Bros agree to release.

What they release, in short, is a film of two halves. There is, of course, Prince the performer. From the film's opening sequences, introducing Prince, the main performers of the Revolution, and a snapshot of the music scene in Minneapolis to its very end, in the barnstorming performances of Purple Rain, in which the film's mix of narrative and music finally seem to coalesce, Prince is as good as he'll ever get on stage. It's little surprise that the live performances, with little editing, subsequently became music videos; the live performances are dynamic, beautifully shot, the choices of songs perfect, and the dynamic between the band members, at least on stage, perfectly encapsulated on film. Even in the case of the two more esoteric cuts the band perform (the greatly abbreviated "Computer Blue", cut down from its towering and bizarre twelve minute original, and "The Beautiful Ones"), both come at the appropriate point of the film-with the exception of Purple Rain, each track comes in sequence throughout the film-are excellently performed and drive the narrative on.

The performances of other major bands in the area, most notably The Time and Apollonia 6 (ironically both a former and a current set of Prince proteges by the time of the film's release, are equally well shot, albeit the second filmed in what one could now call a rather shamelessly titillating way, whilst Morris Day holds court in the dramatic half of the film as an enjoyable foil to Prince's "The Kid", and Apollonia, of course, acts as both love interest and eventual musical rival. Moreover, each of the songs, either from Prince and the Revolution or from one of the other bands, are perfect. Even given "Purple Rain's" abbreviated state here, even given how completely deranged the idea of a dance song without a bassline may have sounded in the case of "When Doves Cry", even in the case of the curtain-twitching created by "Darling Nikki", Purple Rain is one of the highest selling records ever made. It won a god-damn Oscar and two Grammys. It is one of the greatest soundtracks of all time.

All of which is great, but away from the stage, where Purple Rain is not about the clash of musically backed, larger than life personalities, it's a strangely muted film. Everything on "Purple Rain" the record is massive. It's important. It feels vital. Purple Rain the Movie, though it acts as vehicle for these songs, though we have to remember the 13 times Diamond certified record is the soundtrack to this film...almost feels like an afterthought when the Kid isn't on stage performing. Prince, certainly, is game for this acting thing, though his role is largely restricted to playing, essentially a barely disguised version of himself as a slightly younger man-indeed, almost all of his four major cinematic appearances are such, with the fourth and final, Graffiti Bridge (1990) a direct sequel to Purple Rain.

Thus, Prince wanders, shoulders squared and jacket up against the world, riding on the film's truly iconic bike, between the make-believe world of the club, where he is a struggling but defiant star, and the grounded, gloomy reality of life with his abused mother and abusive father, later found to be a musician, who like his son threatens to be, fell out of musical favour and into obscurity. It's not difficult to read autobiographical details into this, to see this as an attempt on celluloid to come to grips with his childhood and his parents' divorce, as well as the more general sense of being an isolated young man in late Sixties America. Music, for both Prince, and the Kid, is an escape. A salvation.

We see his relationship with Apollonia, the growth of the romance, and in the film's sudden crux, the scandalous "Darling Nikki", that, long before scandalising Tipper Gore, drives a wedge between the Kid and his band, and their promoter, a down and dirty, sleazy, unapologetic grind of a song. We see his difficulty relationship with his father, a man who the film paints as much as a demon as another troubled artist laid low by his inability to please the voracious audience, his mother who seems little more than troubled figure-if the film is brought low by anything, it's in its oddly backward view of women, who through most of the film are little more than window dressing or passive figures in this ultra-masculine preening match of Minneapolis's music scene.

And this is the problem with Purple Rain. Every moment where Prince isn't on stage playing feels wasted. The narrative cannot take the weight of the quality of the songs, and its strange half-way house between concert movie and flimsy plot has, frankly been done better and in more fantastical style by Metallica in their otherwise daft concert movie Through the Never and by Led Zeppelin in the colossal and ultimately dated The Song Remains the Same. Purple Rain, absolutely, doubtlessly, deserves its place in music's canon, but as a piece of cinema it is utterly forgettable when Prince isn't where he belongs, on stage with his band

Rating: Recommended