What a surprise! Just when the 1985 holiday movie season appeared to be getting ready to set some kind of record for consecutive disappointments, along comes Steven Spielberg's triumphantly emotional and brave adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Color Purple," the saga of 30 years in the tortured lives of two black sisters.

This film is just as conventionally emotional as those films--indeed it triggered one observer to burst into tears late in the film on the sound of a single word, "Mama." But to its everlasting credit, "The Color Purple" is also a film that takes risks.

Specifically, it takes an incredibly strong stand against the way black men treat black women. Cruel is too kind a word to describe their behavior. The principal black men in "The Color Purple" use their women--both wives and daughters--as sexual chattel.