*All reviews contain spoilers*
Disclaimer: This blog is purely recreational and not for profit. Any material, including images and/or video footage, is property of their respective companies, unless stated otherwise. The author claims no ownership of this material. The opinions expressed therein reflect those of the author and are not to be viewed as factual documentation. All screencaps are from Disneyscreencaps.com.
Cast –
Robby Benson – Beast
Mary Kay Bergman – Bimbette
Jesse Corti – LeFou
Brian Cummings – Stove
Alvin Epstein – Bookseller
Rex Everhart – Maurice
Tony Jay – Monsieur D’Arque
Angela Lansbury – Mrs. Potts
Alec Murphy – Baker
Paige O’Hara – Belle
Jerry Orbach – Lumiere
Bradley Michael Pierce – Chip
Kimmy Robertson – Featherduster
Hal Smith – Philipe
Kath Soucie – Bimbette
David Ogden Stiers – Cogsworth and Narrator
Frank Welker – Footstool
Richard White – Gaston
Jo Anne Worley – Wardrobe
And another mass of additional voices!
Sources of Inspiration – Beauty and the Beast, a French fairy tale best known in versions by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (1740) and Jeanne-Marie le Prince de Beaumont (1756)
Release Dates –
September 29th, 1991 at the New York Film Festival, USA (a preview – the film wasn’t even fully finished here – but it still got a standing ovation!)
November 10th, 1991 at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California (early engagement)
November 13th, 1991 in New York City, New York (early engagement)
November 15th, 1991 in Los Angeles, California (early engagement)
November 22nd, 1991 in USA (general release)
Run-time – 84 minutes
Directors – Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
Composers – Alan Menken
Worldwide Gross – $425 million
Accolades – 26 wins and 21 nominations including 2 Oscar wins and a nomination for Best Picture (with six Oscar nominations, it’s tied with WALL-E {2008} as the most-nominated animated film)
1991 in History
Georgian troops attack the capital of South Ossetia, a partially recognised state, opening the First South Ossetian War
The central conflict of the Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, results in thousands of deaths in Iraq and Kuwait
Somali President Siad Barre is overthrown, sparking the ongoing Somali Civil War; a breakaway republic called Somaliland declares independence
The Provisional Irish Republican Army launch a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting, followed by bombs in Paddington and Victoria stations in London later that month
George Holliday videotapes Rodney King being beaten by four officers of the LA Police Department after a car chase; the incident would lead to the LA Riots of 1992
Demonstrations against Slobodan Milošević turn violent in Belgrade, then the capital of both Serbia and Yugoslavia, resulting in two deaths
Exxon agrees to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of its disastrous oil spill back in 1989
Germany formally regains its full independence after the various French, British, American and Soviet claims to it are relinquished
The Sierra Leone Civil War begins following an attempted coup against the government
The largest rescue operation in US history occurs in Sacramento, involving over forty hostages held at an electronics store; three of the four Vietnamese gunmen are killed
Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit Japan, but fails to resolve the dispute over the Kuril Islands
The first Starbucks Coffee outlet in California is opened
Édith Cresson becomes the first (and so far only) female Prime Minister of France
A coalition of rebel groups overthrows the Ethiopian government, thus ending the civil war there
In June, Japan and the Philippines both suffer from deadly volcanic eruptions, courtesy of Mt Unzen and Mt Pinatubo respectively; Pinatubo’s eruption is the second-largest of the twentieth century, after Alaska’s Novarupta eruption of 1912
In South Africa, the segregation policies of apartheid are finally brought to an end
The first Sonic the Hedgehog game is released by Sega, beginning a long-running series
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is released in North America
The Ten-Day War, the first of the Yugoslav Wars, occurs following the Slovenian declaration of independence from Yugoslavia
The Mauritania-Senegal Border War is ended with a treaty
Boxer Mike Tyson is arrested and charged with the rape of Desiree Washington in Indianapolis
The first website, http://info.cern.ch/, is created (you can still visit it today)
The Warsaw Radio Tower, then the world’s tallest structure, collapses; it has only been surpassed in height since by the Burj Khalifa
St. Petersburg changes its name back from Stalingrad, which it had been known as since 1924 (prior to that it was also Petrograd)
Ötzi the Iceman is found in the Alps, Europe’s oldest known natural human mummy
The almost eight-month Siege of Dubrovnik begins in Croatia
An agreement between Cambodia’s government and the Khmer Rouge leads to the creation of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia
The 1991 “Perfect Storm” causes over $200 million in damage in the north-eastern US and Atlantic Canada
NBA star Magic Johnson bravely announces his HIV-positive status, helping to dispel the myth that HIV was a “gay disease” which couldn’t affect heterosexuals. Later that month (November), Queen frontman Freddie Mercury passes away from AIDS-related pneumonia
The famed and glamorous US airline Pan Am collapses in the wake of Lockerbie and the Gulf War
After a particularly troubled year, the Soviet Union collapses on December 26th after 74 years; all fifteen constituent states become independent (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan)
Births of Pixie Lott, Ed Sheeran, Bonnie Wright, Jamie Lynn Spears, Mitchel Musso, Austin Butler, Dylan O’Brien, Kyle Massey, Tyler Posey, Shailene Woodley, Charlie Puth and Louis Tomlinson
Brace yourselves, everyone. We’ve arrived. It’s time to take a look at Disney’s thirtieth classic, the much beloved Beauty and the Beast. As Mama Odie might say… this gon’ be good!
The story of Beauty and the Beast goes right back to Metamorphoses, or “The Golden Ass” of Lucius Apuleius, the only ancient roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety, in which some of the basic elements of the story can be found in the tale of Cupid and Psyche. Apuleius’s work, however, was based on an even earlier one in Greek which is now lost, so nobody knows exactly where the story came from.
The two versions we’re most familiar with today are from the eighteenth century. One was published in 1740 as part of a collection of fairy tales called La Jeune Américaine ou les Contes marins, by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (what a fabulously French name!). After her death, Jeanne-Marie le Prince de Beaumont (there’s another one!) then published an abridged version, without giving Villeneuve any credit – this is why she is sometimes considered the original author of the work to this day.
The earliest filmed version was created by Pathé Frères in 1899, but by far the most famous film adaptation prior to Disney’s was Jean Cocteau’s 1946 black-and-white version, La belle et la bête, which greatly inspired the structure and aesthetic of this film (and may also have put Walt off a second attempt at adapting the story in the fifties).
Walt himself first suggested the idea as early as 1940, according to Ollie Johnston, but the filmmakers at the time struggled with the story’s dark, rather ponderous second act and so the idea was ultimately shelved. It remained there for decades, although intriguingly Don Bluth was said to have been considering an adaptation around 1984, but for whatever reason that never happened.
Not until 1983 was the idea of tackling Beauty and the Beast brought up again. That year, the first story treatment was brought forward by Pete Young, Vance Gerry and Steve Hulett, followed in 1986 by another from Phil Nibbelink and Steven E. Gordon. These early drafts stuck quite closely to the original material but were all deemed too unworkable, mainly because of an excess of supporting characters and business bogging down the story and taking the focus off the leads. In 1988, a treatment by Jim Cox proved to be the one that really got the ball rolling; Michael Eisner was taken with it and approved the project, thus kicking off the pre-production phase (although Jeffrey Katzenberg rejected Cox’s full scripted version – wisely, as it was another overly-cluttered take on the story which needed streamlining).
With anticipation building for The Little Mermaid, the studio opted to adapt another fairy tale in the spirit of their original classics, with Katzenberg choosing Linda Woolverton to write it (the first woman to write an animated Disney film). For the directing job, Katzenberg first approached Richard Williams, who had recently directed the animated portions of Robert Zemeckis’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but Williams was too busy with his passion project The Thief and the Cobbler (1993) which had been gestating for decades. Instead, Williams suggested his friend, the British director Richard Purdum, who took the job.
The crew found Purdum easy to work with and spent many weeks in London with him working on their ideas, but in this early development stage something felt off; the story was still proving to be difficult to work with. For inspiration, a group consisting of Richard Purdum and his wife Jill, Hans Bacher, Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, Don Hahn, Tom Sito, Jean Gillmore and Thom Enriquez visited the Loire Valley of France on a research trip for five days in the early autumn of 1989. They packed a lot into their brief visit, exploring Chaumont, Blois and the village of Chenonceaux and taking detailed photographs of the many châteaux they visited to get a feel for the details of French architecture.
Even then, however, the struggle continued, prompting Katzenberg to begin making major changes to the way the film was being made (such as turning it into a musical). Purdum grew uncertain with the direction the film was taking and in December that year, he amicably resigned as director, as he felt the film was no longer the one he’d wanted to make. Six months in, the filmmakers found themselves starting production over again nearly from scratch, a decision which forced them to operate on a much tighter schedule for the remainder of the production period to keep costs from rising too high.
To replace Purdum, Disney first attempted to appoint Musker and Clements, the duo behind The Little Mermaid, but they were still too tired from their work on that film and wanted a break. The directing jobs finally went to Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, a youthful pair whose only directing experience up to then had been on a short film called Cranium Command, which was created for a Disney EPCOT theme park attraction. Naturally, they were surprised to find themselves assigned as directors to a whole animated film (after a brief stint as “acting directors” before they got the jobs for real), but I’ve heard at least one theory that their lack of experience was part of the reason they were hired – that Eisner and Katzenberg just want them to act as intermediaries, with themselves as the real heads of the production. Who knows?
Anyway, they did a stellar job and coached the crew through the remainder of the production with its many ups and downs, before finally bringing the film to fruition at the end of 1991. Now, this article is already going to be long enough, so I won’t start talking about the reception of it here – suffice to say that it enjoyed rapturous reviews and has gone down as one of the studio’s greatest achievements (but you already knew that, I’m sure). Strap yourselves in and get set for a good look at this beauty – it’s gonna be quite a ride!
Characters and Vocal Performances
The film’s producer, Don Hahn, put its success down to its “sincerity” because it had relatable characters, a quality that was largely due to the influence of Howard Ashman (you may remember him from the Mermaid review). I agree with Hahn; the characters are integral to any good fairy tale story and nobody makes a fairy tale film like Disney. The point of the classic fairy tales was to inspire self-reflection and growth, by teaching moral lessons with believable characters that the audience could relate to. Beauty and the Beast is a particularly interesting one, because over the centuries the story’s central character has shifted back and forth between the two title characters depending on the interpretation of the filmmaker. Let’s begin by having a look at our “Beauty” in Disney’s version, a young woman named Belle.
Disney briefly considered re-using Jodi Benson (wow, how creative) for the character, but Howard Ashman suggested Paige O’Hara because her voice sounded more mature and “European.” In another parallel with Ariel, Belle also shared the same live-action model as her – Sherri Stoner. However, a lot of Belle’s characteristics and mannerisms were taken from O’Hara (such as her habit of tucking back her hair), while parts of her personality came from writer Linda Woolverton. Here at last was a Disney woman who was truly created by women. Although the studio had taken some steps in the right direction with Ariel, Woolverton and Ashman knew that a passive heroine just wouldn’t be good enough for modern audiences and made Belle a much more active agent in the story, expanding her role greatly from earlier treatments where nobody had seemed to know what to do with her. She is on screen for more time than any other character in the film!
Belle is supposed to be just seventeen years old, only slightly older than Ariel, but she feels far more mature as a character; tellingly, despite sharing similar feelings of frustration with her life, Belle handles it much better than Ariel did. In keeping with her youth, her desires are deliberately vague – even she doesn’t know exactly what it is she wants, only knowing that she wants more than the “provincial life” she’s living, where she feels stifled and underappreciated (very relatable for us Millennials). Belle is the first Disney heroine who is portrayed as unambiguously intelligent, standing alongside the likes of Matilda and Hermione as one of the rare female characters who champion reading. Linda Woolverton must have identified with Belle a lot, working as she was in such a male-dominated field where women rarely got to do the top jobs; it’s easy to see why Belle is a favourite with so many women out there. Of course, there’s more to intelligence than just reading, but the habit still acts as a handy signifier of her character and she does get other chances to demonstrate her ingenuity during the course of the film.
Belle may have romantic dreams of adventure, but in the words of Christopher Finch, she also has a “solid, practical streak” which keeps her more firmly grounded in reality than previous heroines. Her relationship with her father is notably different to Ariel’s; the two are much closer and experience a lot less friction. Belle is very protective of Maurice, as we see when she vehemently defends him against Gaston on two different occasions and goes to great lengths to help him when he’s in trouble. With no mother (again) and apparently no siblings, there’s a sense that the two of them rely on each other as they’re all they have – it’s nice to see a Renaissance character who isn’t rebelling against their parents! That said, Belle and Maurice don’t seem to have a lot in common, and although she loves her father he still doesn’t provide her with the kind of intellectual stimulation she’s looking for. The look on her face when he suggests that she spend some more time with the “handsome” Gaston says it all; Maurice may be loving, but he doesn’t really understand her. Gradually, she shifts her attachment to her father on to the Beast, who is a better match for her personality.
As I said in my discussion of Ariel, it’s great to see Disney heroines being allowed to do something, taking action when it’s required instead of letting other characters push them about. Prior to The Little Mermaid, all we really had was Miss Bianca and perhaps Wendy at a stretch – heck, most Dark Age films had almost no women in them at all! Active women in earlier Disney films tended to be the villains: the Evil Queen, Maleficent, Cruella and so on. Belle is no villain, but she’s certainly active. On both occasions when her father is lost in the woods, she immediately sets out to rescue him by herself with no hesitation, succeeding in doing so both times. She also keeps the villagers from throwing him into the insane asylum by proving the Beast’s existence with the magic mirror, in a great moment of quick thinking. One key thing that everybody always seems to forget when talking about the film is that the decision to stay in the castle is also Belle’s – she makes the bargain with the Beast, trading her freedom for her father’s. She’s decisive, confident and resourceful, making for a very strong protagonist.
Of course, that’s not so say she’s a Mary Sue. The most common criticism of Belle seems to be that she is “too perfect,” but this really couldn’t be further from the truth. She makes her share of mistakes during the film… just look at the scene where she blatantly violates the Beast’s privacy and betrays his trust by prying in the West Wing, mere hours after he’s told her not to go there! Curiosity killed the cat and it nearly kills her, too, when he finds her snooping in his private quarters. Seriously Belle, it’s his house – how rude! This flaw is in keeping with her character, though; excessive curiosity is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect a smart person to suffer from. Before we get to know her properly, Belle’s scenes at the start of the film also suggest a hint of snobbery, as it feels like she’s looking down on the inhabitants of her village simply for not being as smart as her (this is before we realise how catty and rude they are to her, of course). There’s even a fantastic moment just after the wolf fight where we actually see Belle’s conscience kicking in, overriding her first instinct to escape and leave the Beast there to die. She’s handled in a believably “real” manner and at no point did I find her to be “too perfect.”
What really makes Belle likeable is that she is portrayed as a good person, of the kind we all aspire to be like. No matter what the situation or who she’s talking to, she remains polite and well-intentioned, always trying to see the best in people and selflessly doing all she can to help them. (Maybe it’s because I’m British, but I loved how well-mannered she is throughout the film, always saying “please” and “thank you” – a small touch, but an appreciated one). However, she’s also no pushover – it’s terrific to see the way she stands up to Gaston, never showing a hint of fear in the face of his overbearing machismo, treating him respectfully but always ready to challenge his abusive treatment of her. Once he threatens her father, she doesn’t hold back from telling him precisely what she thinks of him.
This attitude also extends to the Beast, but her relationship with him is more complex because she sees that he is not as hopeless as Gaston and so has more patience with him. She treats the Beast fairly – when he’s being a dick, she doesn’t stand for it and shuts him out, holding her ground while he roars and raves. When he’s done something kind, however, she’s not too proud to thank him for it, as shown in the beautiful scene after the wolf fight, where she slips a sincere word of gratitude for saving her life into a blazing row with the Beast, disarming him and softening his attitude towards her. In fact, Belle could be seen as the stronger character of the two (again like Ariel and Eric) because she is more secure in who she is and what she wants. She is more emotionally stable and helps the Beast through his personal problems; he is the one who needs to change and develop.
Of course, the downside of that is that she doesn’t get as strong of an arc to her character as he does. This is really why the story should be looked at as the Beast’s rather than Belle’s, because he is the one who goes through the most change.
A curious mixture of actors were considered to play the Beast, including Laurence Fishburne, Val Kilmer, Tim Curry and Mandy Patinkin (the latter was also considered for McLeach in The Rescuers Down Under), but casting the role actually proved to be quite a challenge. After running through almost every baritone on Broadway, Disney finally settled on Robby Benson, who was something of a surprise choice as his earlier work was very different to the role of the Beast. Benson’s voice was altered with the growls of real panthers and lions so that it is virtually unrecognisable, but there are moments where his voice is kept deliberately closer to Benson’s usual one – always when we are hearing the “Prince” side of him, whether in voiceover inside his head or at the end after the transformation. (Interesting side note on the voice casting: for the Mandarin dub, the Beast was performed by none other than Jackie Chan!)
Katzenberg stressed to the writers that the story is truly that of the Beast and urged them to put the focus on him and his development. (Odd then that he’s never named during the film, but various other media have since given him the name of Prince Adam, which is tentatively accepted as canon). This was done, with the result that the Beast became one of Disney’s most complex characters and goes through a considerable amount of development in a very short space of time. The Beast’s story is one of redemption – one stupid mistake in his youth has nearly ruined his life, but he has the chance to fix things and seizes it with both paws.
The Beast is a very emotional character, capable of building himself up into towering rages and then collapsing into the depths of melancholy in an instant. It’s important to remember that he is only around twenty-one, so this feels accurate – like many young people, he’s overdramatic and feels every feeling to the greatest extent possible. He’s never just angry, he’s apoplectic; never just sad but devastated… and the same goes for love. It’s quite adorable to see him fumbling through the early stages of the courtship with no idea what he’s doing, trying to express himself with enormous gestures like gifting Belle an entire library (lucky girl), but on the flip side, it’s heart-breaking to see his utter despair upon her absence. He’s basically portrayed as childish, limited in both tragic and comic ways, with a sense of vulnerability to him that really gets you rooting for him, especially in the unguarded moments where you see his internal conflict.
The Beast starts out very animalistic; after years of isolation, he’s completely out of touch with other people and is very aggressive and paranoid. Meeting Belle changes him and he begins to mellow out, because for the first time in his life he’s challenged over his selfish behaviour. With no reasons to give in to his will and a strong personality, Belle stands up to him and does him a favour by calling him out on his actions, helping his hidden humanity to blossom and teaching him to understand and control himself. Of course, most of the credit for the change goes to the Beast himself; Belle may be the motivator, but ultimately he chooses to change of his own volition out of respect for her. Some have argued that the film perpetuates a negative stereotype of women trying to “fix” abusive men, but that’s hardly the case – Belle explicitly wants nothing to do with the Beast until he begins to modify his behaviour. Her presence may be the catalyst that sparks the change, but the Beast does most of the legwork.
The Beast is a far more complex hero than any previous Disney protagonist, with subtle moods and layers that make him feel far more “real” than any of the cipher-like princes of yesteryear. He’s always teetering between comical and threatening but the balance is kept just right, lending him considerable dramatic presence while keeping him a likeable personality. For perhaps the first time in the canon, the hero’s battle is not with some external force but with his own inner demons (until Gaston arrives) – the Beast’s coat of arms even reads “He conquers, who conquers himself.” Meeting Belle helps him to conquer his initial selfishness and the conclusion of his emotional arc comes in the moment, beautifully animated, where he decides to free her, putting her needs before his own. As Mrs. Potts neatly sums it up, “After all this time… he’s finally learned to love.”
His relationship with Belle is interesting because although they’re similar in many ways, there’s also a clear imbalance in their dynamic with the Beast has to learn to correct. Both characters are very stubborn, which makes for some hilarious clashes between them (the scene outside the bedroom door is a comedy highlight), but there’s also a lot of give-and-take with Belle teaching him about how to be a better person. Both of them are flawed – the Beast needs to “learn to control his temper,” as Belle puts it, while she herself must learn not to give in to temptation and respect his boundaries. As they develop respect for each other, their relationship blossoms naturally as they discover mutual interests (including a love for literature, despite the Beast’s rusty reading skills) and is easily the most convincing of the Disney romances we’ve seen so far. I think the essence of it is captured nicely in the short breakfast scene where they have porridge together and the Beast is struggling with his utensils. Encouraged by his staff, he makes an effort for her and she responds by meeting him halfway in a compromise, with both of them raising their bowls to sip out of.
It’s sweet to see the way she draws him out of his shell and they each fulfil a deep longing in the other, as both characters are at heart very lonely and want nothing more than a good friend. I know it’s mushy, but they really do “complete” one another.
The central issue may be the Beast’s inner turmoil, but no good Disney film is complete without a nice hammy villain to sink your teeth into. For the role of Gaston, Rupert Everett was considered, but was told that he didn’t sound “arrogant” enough (a note he remembered when playing Prince Charming in Shrek 2 thirteen years later). Donny Osmond and Patrick Swayze were also in the running, but in the end the directors decided to stick with the Broadway theme and went with Richard White, who they felt sounded as if he “never stopped singing.”
With Gaston, the filmmakers turned another stereotype on its head. Belle is a strong and active female character who just happens to be attractive, while Gaston looks like the typical lantern-jawed hero on the surface but hides a cruel heart beneath his chiselled exterior – this is the first Disney villain who isn’t designed to look so obviously evil. Gaston actually serves as an interesting parallel to the Beast; when you really look at them side by side, the two characters are almost disturbingly similar, starting life under the same circumstances and suffering from the same faults. Both are spoiled, good-looking young men who are used to getting their own way simply because people are afraid of them, totally self-absorbed with no respect for anyone else’s feelings. Only as the film goes on do we begin to see the crucial differences between them.
Gaston starts the film out as something of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Although he’s clearly a bit of a dunce, he isn’t portrayed as especially bad at first – insensitive and pushy, perhaps, but not evil. In fact, he’s a rather comical character in his early scenes (the moment where he gets distracted by his own reflection during his proposal to Belle is so funny) and Belle is shown to have the upper hand in their relationship, making a fool out of him and not really taking him seriously. Only after he has been (quite rightly) humiliated does his descent into outright villainy begin, where we see his selfishness morphing into obsession and finally murderous insanity as he becomes consumed by his quest for Belle. Like the Beast, Gaston has probably never been told “no” in his life, but whereas the Beast reacts to it with self-reflection and improvement, Gaston utterly loses control and develops a mania about Belle. It is not the girl herself that he’s interested in; he just wants to win. To get what he wants. To conquer.
The character of Gaston is the film’s way of poking fun at and deconstructing the harmful culture of everyday sexism and sexual harassment that has been prevalent in western society for so long. Gaston doesn’t see Belle as a person but as a trophy, a “prize to be won” (as Jasmine might say), which is exactly why we don’t want to see him end up with her. His disregard for her opinions and feelings is taken to an almost comical extreme when he literally springs a wedding on her before he’s even proposed, simply assuming that she will be as thrilled at the chance to be with such a fine “specimen” as all the other girls in town would be. His narcissism is so powerful that it renders him into a sort of sociopath; he’s completely incapable of understanding anyone else’s point of view, so convinced is he of his own perfection.
In the end, Gaston’s demise comes about because he simply refuses to change. As a character, he personifies the Beast’s struggle to overcome his flaws, because he represents what the Beast could become if he doesn’t change – his death at the very moment where Beast realises that Belle has come back to him could be seen as the last of the Beast’s insecurities falling away. The Beast learns to put another person’s needs first, which is something that Gaston was too narrow-minded to do; one thing that spoke volumes about the difference between the two characters was their reactions to Belle’s love of books. Gaston snubs her interest and derides her for it, telling her that she needs to stop and trying to make her feel bad about it; the Beast, on the other hand, is enthusiastic about it, giving her the run of his library and even trying to engage with her passion, bonding with her by allowing her to help him with his reading (and taking a check to his pride at the same time; you can’t imagine Gaston admitting there’s something he can’t do). The Beast loves Belle just the way she is and doesn’t feel the need to try and change her, like Gaston does. Gaston is in love with the idea of Belle; he’s fallen for her looks and wants to mould her personality to fit what he believes a beautiful woman should be like, as part of a grander fantasy vision of his life.
The best that can be said about Gaston is that he does at least do his own dirty work. Like all the best villains, he actually follows through on his threats and gets things done, displaying such remarkable persistence and determination that you almost feel sad that he’s wasting it on such hopeless pursuits. He’s also no coward, facing the Beast alone and fighting him one-on-one, despite the Beast’s impressive frame dwarfing even his own. He might fight dirty, but hey, at least he does fight – there’s something to admire in that, somewhere. And remember – noooooo onnnnne fights like Gaston douses lights like Gaston in a-
Ahem. Sorry about that. Can’t resist that song.
So, Maurice. His role was originally much greater but had to be drastically reduced during the production, as the filmmakers realised that he was stealing the spotlight from the protagonists. The character that we see here is obviously a loving father – it’s quite a contrast to see the warm interactions between him and Belle in their home after the fractious relationship we got between Ariel and Triton. Of course, Triton is a very different character to Maurice; for some reason, Disney dads always seem to fall into one of two distinct categories. They’re either towering, muscled “he-men” who make their children feel oppressed, or tiny, harmless little goofballs who are too inept to understand their children. Absent-minded and distracted, Maurice definitely belongs to the latter category. Although he loves Belle, he doesn’t seem to really understand her, even though they appear to shame the same high intellect judging by the complicated contraptions he creates.
Maurice may not be oppressing his daughter, but his antics are still the main impetus of the plot as Belle continually has to break off what she’s doing to go and rescue him after he gets lost in the woods (again and again). His ravings about the Beast are also what spark Gaston’s idea about imprisoning him to coerce Belle into marrying him, so he certainly causes his fair share of problems. That said, he does his best to right his own wrongs; it’s stirring to see him packing up and setting out to rescue Belle by himself, despite being an old man without so much as a crossbow to defend himself.
As is inevitable with these parent characters, questions are raised about the other half of Belle’s family. What has happened to Maurice’s wife? Given the time period, it’s reasonable to suppose she may have died in childbirth, especially considering Maurice’s age (they seem to have had Belle rather late, assuming that they were about the same age). That certainly seems more likely than the remake’s ideas about “plague”, anyway. On another note, Belle’s mother must have been a pretty statuesque woman, because Belle dwarfs her little father in height and it’s extremely rare for girls to outgrow their fathers!
LeFou is our standard villainous sidekick character. He’s caricatured almost into another species, but looks very much like a human version of Creeper from The Black Cauldron. He’s somewhat more entertaining than Creeper was, but still not one of the strongest sidekicks we’ve had so far (nobody’s challenged Flotsam and Jetsam for me up to this point). LeFou’s role seems to fall halfway between being Gaston’s cheerleader and being his abused underling, but at no point does their relationship ever feel like a genuine friendship. No wonder; Gaston is completely incapable of empathy and has no need for real friendship, so poor LeFou must simply fawn over him and puff up Gaston’s already gigantic ego in order to be tolerated.
You wonder why LeFou hangs around with this bozo, as we get a few hints that the little guy might not be incapable of finding better company if he wanted. Maybe it’s just for street cred; all bullies tend to attract a following of other losers who just want a boost for their reputations, and LeFou does seem to hold some level of respect among the other villagers, who happily join him in celebrating Gaston’s awesomeness and are quick to listen to him when he’s drumming up the mob to storm the castle. For whatever reason, though, LeFou is shown to be very loyal to Gaston, even staying put in the freezing cold for what must have been days or maybe even weeks to wait for Belle and Maurice to return. (Honestly, it’s no surprise the remake made him ambiguously gay for Gaston, there’s definitely some subtext here). He takes all the abuse that the big lunk dishes out and while you laugh, it’s hard not to wonder what he gets out of this relationship… unless there is indeed a deeper desire than we’re being shown!
The idea of having the castle servants be turned into enchanted objects (as opposed to just having existing objects become enchanted) was apparently another brainwave of Howard Ashman’s. He worked with Linda Woolverton to flesh out their characters and this proved to be an excellent decision, making the film that little bit more memorable. The servants as a group have pretty complex motivations, because although they do care about both the Beast and Belle, what they want more than anything is to get back their own lives as humans (as the song Human Again sums up). You might notice that none of the servants except the youthful Chip ever refer to Belle by name; in a way, she is just a means to an end for them, although given their situation their attitude is understandable! They don’t particularly care what she’s like – they just want their master to hit it off with her a.s.a.p.
Lumiere, the valet-turned-candelabra and one of the few characters with a French accent, forms one half of a dynamic duo of sorts with Cogsworth, the former major-domo who has been turned into a mantle clock. The part of Cogsworth was originally intended for John Cleese, but he turned it down for another animated project, the Don Bluth sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). For a third time, Patrick Stewart also had to turn the role down, due once again to his scheduling conflicts with Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). Even Ian McKellen was considered, eventually getting to play the character in the 2017 remake, but for this film the role finally went to David Ogden Stiers (who had first auditioned for Lumiere). Lumiere himself, meanwhile, went to Jerry Orbach, who played the role as an homage to Maurice Chevalier.
Despite the friction between them, Lumiere and Cogsworth compliment each other well. Where the former is emotionally warm but reckless and irresponsible, the latter is logical and practical but rather cold. Together, they make a strong duo, balancing out each other’s extreme decisions into something workable (most of the time). They also provide a lot of comic relief with their bickering, a reflection of the relationship between the animators who worked on them. David Ogden Stiers in particular did a lot of improvising with his role; his line about “promises you don’t intend to keep” had everybody present in stitches!
Cogsworth was originally planned to be a doddery old grandfather clock, but due to the issues this created when interacting with other characters he was downscaled into a mantle clock. Although he can be a little insensitive at times, it sometimes feels like he’s the only one in the castle with any sense! When he tries to prevent the others from ushering Maurice straight into the master’s chair, or from throwing Belle a lavish dinner when she’s been banned from having anything, you can’t help but see his point. There are less conspicuous ways of going about helping these people without so blatantly courting their master’s wrath! He’s proven right in the first instance, when Maurice is promptly seized by the Beast and dragged off to the dungeons, but on the other hand there are never any repercussions when Belle is given a noisy banquet later on. Given that the Beast couldn’t possibly have failed to hear it, perhaps Lumiere simply had a better grasp of the Beast’s character by that point and knew there was no real danger? Either way, Cogsworth does get a few moments where he shows that he does have a heart; look closely and you’ll see him comforting Mrs. Potts as the last petal falls from the rose.
Lumiere is a hospitable, roguish little chap who serves mainly as comic relief, but he’s also there to give Cogsworth a little nudge in the right direction at times. His relationship with the Beast is rather like that of an older brother; they share a nice moment or two when Lumiere gives him some romantic advice and it’s funny to see that it works. If there’s one thing Lumiere knows, it’s women: the idea to give Belle the library is implied to have been his, showing that although he may be a bit of a womaniser, he does pay attention to the girls he’s interested in and knows the importance of valuing them as people. (It’s also worth noting that he pursues the same girl throughout the film rather than bouncing about from one to another). With a flair for the dramatic and a real streak of the showman in him, Lumiere is definitely a welcome addition to the cast.
So, too, is Mrs. Potts, the motherly housekeeper who has been turned into a teapot. Julie Andrews was apparently considered at one point, but Angela Lansbury – already a Disney veteran from 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks – was one of Howard Ashman’s only choices for the role. It really was perfect casting and she gives the character a great deal of life and heart, while at the same time projecting a stiff-upper-lip sort of attitude that makes it clear she won’t stand for any moonshine. As the emotional anchor of the staff, it is fitting that she is given the titular ballad to sing in the famed ballroom scene and Lansbury does a lovely job with it.
Angela Lansbury’s mannerisms informed the animation of her character, but in the case of Mrs. Potts’s son, Chip, the young voice actor was so influential that he completely changed the role of his character. Bradley Michael Pierce (who would later go on to star in Jumanji alongside Robin Williams) captivated the filmmakers with his performance and so they greatly expanded Chip’s role, eliminating a whole other character (a music box) and giving him a key role in the climax when he frees Belle and Maurice from the cellar. Somehow. (Don’t overthink that part). It might seem like a case of jamming in a “cutesy” kid character for the hell of it, but to be fair, Chip isn’t presented as overly cute and does get some genuinely funny moments when the romantic moments go flying over his head.
One strange thing about Chip is his extreme youth when he’s turned back into a human. He can’t be more than seven or eight at the most, yet white-haired Mrs. Potts looks as though she’s well into her forties at the very least. Is she really his mother? Perhaps she’s just prematurely grey? After all, she’s got good skin… He does also seem to have an extraordinary number of brothers and sisters, although the cups we see might not all be former children. It gets kind of creepy the more you think about it, doesn’t it?
The character of the Wardrobe was introduced by a member of the visual development team called Sue C. Nichols, who wanted to balance the gender ratio of the entirely male cast of servants. Like many other supporting characters, she originally had a more integral role and even a name, “Madame Armoire.” In the stage adaptation, she was named Madame de la Grande Bouche (which means Madame Big Mouth) and that seems to have become her unofficial accepted name outside of the film. Either way, she is a minor but fun presence in the film, helping to ease Belle’s discomfort on her first night in the palace and preparing her for the big ballroom dance. She also gets a few solo moments in the deleted/reinstated number Human Again, describing her former life and her longing to return to it, as well as having a bigger role in the 2017 remake (one of the few changes I liked).
The Featherduster, also unnamed in the film but identified elsewhere as Babette (among other names), is perhaps the most underused member of the servant group. She is essentially just there to function as an object of Lumiere’s affections and help to convey the type of character he is, without being given any real personality of her own. Aside from the disturbing moment in the big castle fight where we see a loutish villager plucking feathers out of her in a strange metaphor for rape, her only other significant moment is when she is the first to break the news to the others that Belle is in the castle.
The head of the local insane asylum, Monsieur D’Arque, has only a very minor role acting as a kind of heavy for Gaston, but Tony Jay did such a fantastic job with his lines (which he recorded in his audition) that he eventually got a much bigger role in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). His silky yet gravelly voice makes this character far more interesting than he has any right to be, with a complex personality that seems somehow both corrupt and sadistic, yet somewhat sympathetic to Maurice’s plight.
The Enchantress in the prologue is about as minor a character as you could hope to find in the film, but her actions set off the entire plot and consequently fans have taken a lot of interest in her. Many have argued that she is even more of an antagonist than Gaston for her ridiculously disproportionate punishment of the young Prince Adam, and there’s definitely something to the argument. After all, the last time a Disney character let an old woman bearing a red gift into the house – she died! The Enchantress tells the prince not to be fooled by appearances, but that’s precisely what she’s doing at that moment! And if, as some argue, the prince is in fact just eleven years old at this point, then he’s quite right not to let some strange woman into the castle without his guardian’s permission. So many mixed messages in this prologue! The Enchantress also seems to be keeping an eye on the proceedings from afar; when Belle is exploring the West Wing and comes close to identifying the prince in a portrait, the rose given to the Beast by the old crone briefly flares up as though to distract her.
The only other characters are Philippe, who is just a horse (but an endearing and loyal one at that), and the villagers. This collection of mindless sheep are incredibly frustrating; anyone who calls Belle a snob just needs to take a look at the people she’s surrounded by to understand her yearnings to get out of the place. Everybody is openly gossiping about her as she walks around town, so loudly that the film’s first big number ends with her giving them a pointed look to shut them up. They also prove to be pliable and easy for Gaston to whip into an angry mob (complete with pitchforks and torches), too gullible for their own good and blindly trusting everything he makes up about the Beast. The only decent one is the Bookseller, who is the closest thing Belle has to a friend before her adventure. He must share her frustrations, trying to sell books in a town like that! The blonde triplets known as the “Bimbettes” – what is that, their surname? – are definitely the most insulting villagers, nothing more than sexist stereotypes used for comic relief, but thankfully their roles are kept small.
Animation
In the early nineties, Disney’s hand-drawn animation was hitting its highest heights yet. The production of Beauty and the Beast involved a lot of animators brought in from Roger Rabbit and once again, the artists made use of live-action reference footage, with Sherri Stoner returning to act as Belle. One of the artists recruited from Roger Rabbit was James Baxter, who was given the job of animating the leading lady herself alongside Disney veteran Mark Henn. The two coordinated their efforts from across the country, because Henn was working from Florida for much of the time. They were committed to doing a good job with Belle, with Baxter even taking waltzing lessons before working on the big ballroom dance sequence to ensure it was as accurate as possible.
For the Beast, who else could Disney appoint but Glen Keane? Known for bringing life and soul to large, powerful characters, he was the natural choice for the character. Creating a believable beast proved challenging, though, with his early efforts feeling too “alien” to fit in with the rest of the cast. Keane drew inspiration from morning walks in Regents Park while in London, during which he was able to see wolves in the nearby London Zoo prowling around their cages; later, he also paid visits to the Los Angeles Zoo for further ideas (and even bought a stuffed bison head that he spotted in a taxidermy shop). The Beast we see in the film was given the brow of a gorilla, the beard and muzzle of a buffalo, the mane of a lion, the tusks of a boar, the body of a bear and the tail and legs of a wolf (which allowed him to walk both on two legs and four). Despite his animal bulk, the animation of the Beast took delicacy and restraint in order to draw out the emotion of the man hidden within, a task which Keane was more than up to after his string of successes in earlier films. The Beast’s unusual face also offered a lot of comic potential; some of the expressions he makes when he’s thinking or confused are a scream.
The scene Keane was most excited about was the transformation sequence, which felt that would be the highlight of his career in animation. He asked to make it the final scene of the Beast’s to be animated, so he could save “the dessert for last.” As it turned out, the schedule said that he would have only two weeks to complete the scene, which wouldn’t be enough, so he went to Don Hahn to ask for an extension and was told to take as long as he needed. During the scene, Paige O’Hara cried real tears while recording Belle’s mourning of the dying Beast in a performance so intense that the director asked if she was okay. O’Hara immediately dropped out of character and quipped, “Acting!”
Strangely enough, most fans seem to prefer the Beast’s “beastly” look to his princely one. The animators knew they’d never please everyone, whatever they made him look like, but still… the design they went with is a little underwhelming to say the least. (Why has he gone from dark to ginger?) The situation is reminiscent of the reaction to the 1946 Cocteau film, where Greta Garbo supposedly called out to “Give me back my beast!” after the transformation happened.
For the hyper-masculine Gaston, Andreas Deja was selected, because of his firm grasp of human anatomy – the “handsome” male characters had always proved notoriously difficult to animate. There were actually disagreements between Deja and Jeffrey Katzenberg over just how handsome Gaston should be; Deja openly admitted that he found the assignment a struggle at first, partly because he felt the character should look more “villainous.” However, as Katzenberg rightly pointed out, in order to subvert the stereotype that Gaston is a parody of, his looks had to be pushed as far as possible – he needed to be a hunk. In the end, they gave him a slightly crooked nose (too much fighting, eh Gaston?) to go with his strong jaw and chin and Deja came to love animating him, creating the perfect balance between humorous and handsome. He paid a lot of attention to the details; there’s even a story that a poll was conducted in the office to decide on the appearance of his chest hair – around twenty drawings were submitted!
For the main servants, Nik Ranieri was given Lumiere and Will Finn got Cogsworth, while Dave Pruiksma worked on Mrs. Potts and Chip. Pruiksma later commented that he felt caught in the middle at times, because Finn and Ranieri had a similarly fiery relationship to their characters, always bickering. Maurice was done by Ruben Aquino, who borrowed the character’s hair from Albert Einstein and made him rounder and more “huggable” to increase the audience’s affection for him. Disney’s own Geppetto from Pinocchio also provided further inspiration. For Belle’s Belgian draft horse, Philippe, Russ Edmonds prepared by taking riding lessons and studying horse anatomy, even going on to buy two horses himself later on. The key characters were rounded out with some wonderfully comic animation on LeFou by Chris Wahl and on the Wardrobe by Tony Anselmo. Everybody involved put a lot of work into the animation and it really shows; these are some of the most memorable characters we’ve seen so far.
As is typical in Disney films of the time, the animation is usually at its most inventive during the musical numbers, with Beauty and the Beast and Be Our Guest essentially filling the roles of Part of Your World and Under the Sea here. Pixar once again provided the computer-generated backgrounds, with the Be Our Guest sequence marking the debut of the Pixar Image Computer system that also featured in the ballroom scenes.
The idea of using CGI to enhance this key part of the film was first suggested by story supervisor Rogers Allers and story artist Brenda Chapman; Allers decided to raise the camera to view the couple from overhead through the chandelier, while Chapman suggested rotating the camera around Belle’s skirt as the Beast spins her past it. The finished scene involved the combined efforts of many animators, layout artists, art directors and background artists and the ballroom they created is officially said to be 72 feet high, 184 feet long and 126 feet wide. The 86-by-61 foot dome in the ceiling was first hand-painted before being texture-mapped into the scene with a computer. Each element of the scene was carefully constructed piece by piece and it still shines today as a highlight not just of the film, but of the entire Disney Renaissance.
The use of the CAPS system certainly helped, although when it first launched it had just 72 GB capacity, less than a modern iPod. Some early attempts at the dramatic cinematography envisioned by the artists resulted in disappointing, spiky monstrosities like the infamous “Chicken Foot Forest” that Belle was supposed to be escaping in. The ballroom scene also suffered from cockiness on the part of the animators, at first, who started out with the camera movements going so fast that it looked like the audience were “flying a jetfighter” around the room – Jeffrey Katzenberg quickly brought the back down to earth, reminding them that the scene was supposed to be about the characters, not the animators. They got the point and created a much better second take, with gentler camera movements simulating the emotions of the characters as well as the waltz that they’re dancing.
Of course, no film is perfect and there are a few shortcomings in the animation, even here. The ending is one example which people tend to point out; even a casual Disney fan could recognise the couple’s final dance as an exact replica of that from the end of Sleeping Beauty (1959). Clean-up head Vera Lanpher took the original cels from that scene and redressed them to turn Philip and Aurora into Belle and Beast/Adam, in the “tradition” of Wolfgang Reitherman. As had happened so many times in the past, the animators found themselves running out of time as production neared its end, forcing them to cut corners here and there in some of the less noticeable shots. Some of the background characters look downright shoddy in certain scenes, and there’s also a bizarre quirk with the design of Belle’s face – it seems to change shape or size slightly in some moments, such as in her first scene with her father. One brief scene that always stood out to me as looking shockingly cheap was where Philippe and Belle are trying to escape some wolves by fleeing across an icy pond and the ice cracks beneath them. It’s perhaps the single worst-looking shot in the film, looking so rushed that you wonder how the animators could have let it go (perhaps it was the victim of dodgy computer animation).
Most of the filmmakers termed this problem “austerity,” and it came about as a result of the lost time from the production’s false start in 1989, made worse by the underwhelming performance of The Rescuers Down Under in 1990. After that, the final leg of the production was kept very tight and controlled; corrections in animation were extremely expensive, so they simply couldn’t fix every problem that arose. Given the difficulties, they really did an admirable job of working around the film’s weaknesses.
Plot
As I mentioned above, Linda Woolverton worked on the script while Roger Allers led the story team, but Howard Ashman once again played a big part in the filmmaking that is not always properly acknowledged. He and Woolverton spent a lot of time together at his home in New York, revising the story and bouncing ideas off one another, but sadly with Ashman’s illness progressing he was increasingly absent from story meetings, leaving Woolverton struggling to defend the script from changes by herself. The crew weren’t told about his illness at first, and Woolverton endured a lot of frustrated arguments with the other filmmakers because she wasn’t used to the highly collaborative production process of an animated film.
Everybody worked together to make the film a reality. Producer Don Hahn was the mediator in a lot of the conflicts and helped to keep tempers under control, while various members of the story team brought their own unique pitching styles to the meetings. Chris Sanders worked on the key moment where Beast dies just as Belle is confessing her love, using the music of composer Dave Grusin for inspiration. Brenda Chapman, meanwhile, was able to pitch more emotional scenes with a lot of heart that many of the men on the team couldn’t quite capture; her shyness forced everybody to draw in close to hear her, making her pitches feel more intimate. The excellent scene where Belle tends Beast’s wounds was one of hers and it really captures his vulnerability at that point in the story, as well as showing off Belle’s strong character and the subtle changes they’re both undergoing. Chapman also led the scene where Belle tends Beast’s wounds, which was inspired by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn films. When she had to pitch it to Katzenberg, she said that she really struggled with pitching, but because Ashman adored the idea he supported her and fought to keep it in the film, defending the scene to Katzenberg.
The handling of the story makes it feel similar to Pride and Prejudice, especially in the way the leads are portrayed (not a bad thing). The original twenty-minute opening was much closer to the original eighteenth century source material, including Belle’s siblings and Maurice’s job as a merchant, but all of this development of her family came at the expense of the main characters: the Beast himself wouldn’t appear until more than twenty minutes in, which presented a considerable problem in a roughly eighty-minute film. The leads weren’t going to have time to get to know each other! A lot of the excess characters were wisely excised and the development was focused more squarely on Belle and the Beast.
Still, the artists stayed true to the original story in other, more symbolic ways. The enchanted rose is a nod to the part where Maurice is imprisoned for picking such a flower from the Beast’s garden, while the origin story of the Beast involves the curse of a fairy, just as in the original (although there the fairy was evil and the Beast an innocent). The idea of the enchanted objects came from the original, too, but was enhanced by Ashman to give the characters distinct personalities in the style of the Seven Dwarfs.
Apparently, there was a “memorable disagreement” (in the words of Charles Solomon) between Howard Ashman and the directors, Trousdale and Wise, at one point. It involved the handling of the prologue – Ashman wanted the Beast to be cursed as a child, but the directors were pushing to make him older because they couldn’t shake visions of Butch Patrick in The Munsters (1964), feeling that the idea was a “cheap shot” and too “ridiculous to take seriously.” Naturally, Ashman didn’t take well to such criticism, but the problem was eventually resolved with the creation of the stained glass depiction of the events, making Beast’s age more ambiguous. Of course, this all lead to the film’s most commonly-noticed plot hole: Just how old was the Beast when he was cursed? He doesn’t look eleven in the prologue, but he’s explicitly said to be twenty-one at the time of the film’s main events. This is further complicated by a line from Lumiere about the servants rusting for “ten years,” but that could perhaps be explained by the idea that the servants were being neglected long before the curse happened. Still, though, you wonder why nobody has missed the Beast in all this time – where are his parents? Has nobody but Maurice found the castle in all the years it’s been under the curse? And where are the inhabitants getting food from?
This is actually one of the film’s biggest weaknesses; there are some fairly glaring plot holes, especially concerning the timelines of events. The changing of the seasons, for instance, while used for symbolic reasons, feels off because it suggests huge amounts of time passing – is Maurice supposed to be scouring the wintry forests looking for Belle for weeks? LeFou is also stationed outside Belle’s house during her entire courtship; I know he’s loyal, but has he really been stood there for months? Maybe the weather anomalies are just part of the curse, who knows?
Gaston’s death is worth mentioning, as that went through a number of intriguing rewrites. The Beast was originally supposed to be stabbed by him twice, following which Gaston was going to push himself off the tower – deliberately – and fall to his death while laughing maniacally. Damn, that’s dark. I can’t believe they actually considered that! The filmmakers eventually realised that suicide might be a bit much for children in the audience to handle, but the existence of this ending does explain why Gaston chooses such a dangerous position to attack Beast in the final film. There was also another draft in which Gaston was supposed to be mauled to death by the wolves of the forest after surviving his fall… good grief. (That idea made a comeback later in The Lion King).
One annoyingly common criticism of the film’s plot is that it supposedly presents Belle as though she has “Stockholm Syndrome,” a pseudo-illness defined as a prisoner’s unhealthy romantic fixation on their captor. Frankly, I don’t think people who say this can have seen the film – Belle is no passive waif who’s been kidnapped against her will. She goes to the castle by choice to find and rescue her father, and the agreement to stay – which is just an agreement – is her own idea (even if she wasn’t thrilled at the thought). Victims of Stockholm Syndrome are also said to resist attempts to rescue them or chances to escape, but Belle leaves the castle within hours of agreeing to stay after the Beast loses his temper with her. She honestly can’t stick him at first, that’s the simple truth of it. Only when he has begun to treat her with respect does she start to take an interest in him. Even after their romance has begun to blossom, she still leaves again with little hesitation to help her father. An interrupted comment to Chip also raises some interesting questions… she says “It’s just that –” as though she’s not certain she’s going to go back, just before Gaston raises a mob and forces her to return to warn the Beast.
My final note on the plot is regarding the ending. Now, this is one criticism that I must admit I can’t fully dismiss, because it does make some kind of sense. The fact that the Beast is a bad person while he is “beastly” or ugly and then gets his looks back after becoming “good” does carry some slightly uncomfortable implications. The ending of the first Shrek (2001) even highlights this problem, with a similar ending in which Fiona falls for Shrek but remains an ogre despite this. Lord knows I’m no fan of Shrek, but I must admit that this ending is more refreshing and makes for a better message for children: you don’t have to be beautiful to find love. Of course, the Beast finds his love while he’s still “beastly,” so perhaps in this instance the good looks can be seen as a reward…It just feels like it kind of undercuts the film’s message not to judge a book by its cover.
Cinematography
The art director for the project was Brian McEntee and he and his team drew inspiration from a wide variety of sources to create the film’s distinctive aesthetic. The most natural one for them to turn to was the classic 1946 Jean Cocteau version, which starred Jean Marais and Josette Day – this was easily the best-known film adaptation of the story prior to Disney’s. As well as this, the artists studied classic French painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard, François Boucher and Jean-Antoine Watteau to try and capture the right “feel” for the film’s setting.
Many of the paintings visible on the walls of the castle are less detailed versions of real-life works by artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn and Francisco de Goya; right after the Beast has stormed off from his argument with Belle about dinner, you can see Girl With a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals on the walls of the corridor. The castle itself was inspired by the Château de Chambord at Loir-et-Cher and the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau in the town of the same name, both of which were among the stops on the artists’ tour of the Loire Valley.
The production team were also inspired in their voice casting, with Paige O’Hara being chosen in part due to her singing voice’s resemblance to Judy Garland’s (Belle’s blue and white farm dress is also likely an allusion to Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz {1939}). Linda Woolverton said that she tried to incorporate a lot of Katherine Hepburn into Belle’s characterisation, especially in her banter with the Beast.
Right from the opening shot, you can tell this film is going to be a particularly sumptuous one. As we slowly pan through the forest towards Beast’s castle, the whole shot looks magnificent, filled with layers reminiscent of the multiplane shots of the Golden Age. As the prologue opens and we see the beautiful panes of stained glass depicting the Beast’s tale of woe, the artwork just gets better and better. The window at the end of the film was even recreated in Disneyland after the film’s release!
The film is filled with delicious backgrounds of the French countryside, as well as some amazing interiors and exteriors for the Beast’s castle. Those five days in France really paid off! The castle is gloriously rich and detailed in almost every shot of it, creating a powerful atmosphere that is unique to this film. As a fellow bibliophile, I found the Beast’s library especially impressive! It bears a strong resemblance to the Oval Reading Room of the Richelieu Building at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, but I don’t think the artists visited this so it might be coincidental. The scenery also bears some resemblance to Disney’s own The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), especially in the tavern scenes with Gaston – an unusual source, given that that film came out of the Package Era.
Of course, the famed tracking shot across the ballroom is one of the highlights of the cinematography – it was the most complex shot ever seen in an animated film at the time. The technology had finally progressed enough to allow the animators to simulate the camera movements of a live-action film more convincingly than ever before.
Attention to detail was paramount throughout every aspect of the film’s cinematography, from the lighting to the colour palette. The village scenes start out very bright and sunny while the castle in which the Beast sulks is smothered in darkness, but the lighting of the two begins to change little by little, until by the climax the villagers are the ones in darkness and the Beast’s castle bursts back into dazzling life, with the final moments taking place in warm daylight. A similar effect was achieved with the careful use of colour, made more effective now that the scenes were coloured by computers. Belle is the only person in her village to wear blue, symbolising the way she doesn’t fit in as well as her emotional “coolness” at that point. The Beast, meanwhile, starts out in a reddish cloak and only the palest of blue shirts – red symbolises evil in the film and blue symbolises good, as is made clear with Gaston’s crimson outfit. As the film progresses, Belle’s wardrobe “warms up” and the Beast’s “cools down” until they eventually meet in the middle, with her in gold and him in blue for their big dance. The notable exception to this colour rule is Gaston’s eyes, which are deceptively blue, the same as Beast’s; literally every detail of him was designed to deceive the audience into seeing him as the hero.
As I mentioned in plot, the seasons are also used as a metaphor for Belle and the Beast’s relationship, reflecting the changing mood and tone of the story. The film opens in what looks like the middle of autumn, as Belle and the others are on the brink of some major changes. After meeting the Beast, things turn icy as winter sets in, reflecting the cold emotional state he’s in and their initially frosty relationship. Gradually, though, the weather begins to warm again as the Beast “thaws,” finally blooming into a full-fledged romantic spring by the film’s end.
One of the film’s most striking moments of cinematography is the Beast’s transformation back into “Prince Adam.” There had already been a multitude of similar scenes in Disney films like the Evil Queen’s change into the old hag, Lampwick’s traumatising shift into a donkey and Cinderella’s rags-to-riches moment that so enthralled Walt, with the most recent being Ariel’s painful-looking transformation into a human. For this scene, Glen Keane’s pride and joy, he studied the Slave sculptures of Michelangelo and Auguste Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais (1889), but he also took inspiration from such mundane sources as his pet basset hound and his own foot. The smoke seen during the scene was actually real, live-action smoke rather than an animated effect, which was originally used in The Black Cauldron and brought back for this film. Beast’s bland human form may leave a lot to be desired, but the scene itself definitely stands out as one of the film’s best.
Soundtrack
In a rare good decision (yes, I said it), Katzenberg chose to turn the film into a musical like The Little Mermaid, wanting to make it more “commercial” and less dark. Alan Menken and Howard Ashman were brought in again and they used their music to push the story along, just as they had before. (Ashman was reluctant at first though, because he was already working on pet project Aladdin for Disney). Most of the songs were recorded live with a full orchestra, with the individual members of the voice cast performing alongside each other rather than being overdubbed separately, in order to give the music the album-like “energy” desired by the filmmakers. Ashman and Menken drew inspiration from a wide variety of different styles and genres, including French, classical and Broadway music, resulting in one of Disney’s richest scores.
The work Menken did on the film’s score was inspired in particular by the “Aquarium” movement from Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, an influence which you can hear in particular in the opening theme of the Beast’s. The melodies of the film’s many songs are woven throughout the score as in The Little Mermaid, connecting it all and making it feel like a cohesive whole which is all part of the same world. The score really shines in the climactic scenes of the Beast’s death and transformation, filled as it is with quiet longing and despair before bursting into joyous celebration after his revival.
The first song, simply titled Belle, is a complex and engaging Gilbert & Sullivan operetta-styled number which packs a lot of exposition into its five-minute run time. (Apparently, the concept for it was “Belle is weird”). Musically, the song has been compared to numbers from other movie musicals like West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965), as well as the Broadway musicals Fiddler on the Roof and She Loves Me. It is performed in the key of D major and O’Hara’s clean soprano combined with White’s powerful baritone sets a vocal range spanning about two octaves, from the low note of A3, sung by White, to the high note G5, sung by O’Hara. O’Hara went on to perform it live at the 1992 Academy Awards and admitted that she was very nervous before her performance, but Angela Lansbury, who was also there, reassured her, saying, “Paige, if I sang like you, I wouldn’t be nervous.” The song truly is a masterpiece and is surprisingly underrated; in just a few minutes it sets up the foundations of our heroine, our villain and their situations and motivations, all with effortless grace and skill. It is one of my favourite pieces from the film, and I voted it as my eighth favourite song from an animated film in an earlier post.
The reprise of the song is also wonderfully uplifting, as we watch Belle run out across the field to belt out her dreams to the world. The music swells and the entire orchestra are brought in as the camera sweeps up through the autumn leaves to reveal a gorgeous vista of the French valleys, moving the audience to feel exactly as Belle does in that moment. This part feels very reminiscent of The Hills Are Alive, with Belle dancing with open arms at the top of a hill! Much like the reprise of Part of Your World, this one is more personal and also more powerful than the main song.
Gaston is a big favourite with many fans and it’s really no surprise – what a fun song this is! Sung by Gaston himself and the other villagers after Belle has rejected his “proposal,” it’s a flashy Lerner and Loewe-flavoured drinking song with a lot of homoerotic undertones (oh, Ashman) which LeFou begins to try and cheer his pal up. The lyrics are often side-splittingly funny in their brazenness, reeling off the many ridiculous attributes which Gaston prides himself on with more than a hint of irony. The rhythm was apparently inspired by “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” which nearly every Gaston hopeful sang in their audition! The brief reprise of the song is even better, with the lyrics now so openly malevolent that it’s a wonder the villagers are still supporting this guy. I chose this as my third favourite animated villain song – it’s so catchy and hilarious that it almost makes you like Gaston, if only for an instant.
(Incidentally, Wikipedia’s summary of the song is weirdly sarcastic, I love it: “Gaston’s talent ranges from fighting, to spitting, to eating excessive quantities of eggs with no apparent negative health impacts, to interior decoration. Gaston, however, is portrayed as somewhat unintelligent, or at least as a relatively poor chess player.”)
Although LeFou doesn’t get his own song, the filmmakers obviously saw his comic potential and gave him some great musical moments to show that off. My favourite is the part just before Gaston’s attempted proposal, where the diminutive sidekick “strikes up the band” – the moment has become a popular meme online, with people substituting the film’s brass band for all manner of wacky and inappropriate songs.
Be Our Guest is another of those Busby Berkeley-inspired numbers that Disney so liked to make around that time, arguably the best one in the canon. It is bright, lively and filled with spectacle, the perfect blend of killer animation and exaggerated Broadway cinematography. The theme from Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony was apparently a major inspiration for the music of this song; Be Our Guest borrows it almost note for note for its main theme. Jerry Orbach’s vocal range spans around three octaves in it, from the low note of F3 to the high note of D♭6, and the song moves through a total of four key changes and modulations.
What’s great about this one is the sheer exuberance with which it’s performed. Finally, after years of neglect, the servants of the castle are free to do what they’ve been longing to do – serve somebody – and so they go way, way over the top. The song was originally intended to be sung to Maurice, but late in production the story artist Bruce Woodside suggested that it made more sense for them to sing it to Belle instead (why waste such a great number on a supporting character, after all?). Much of the animation for the scene was done at Disney’s then-newly opened Florida studio. As you would expect, the popular piece has been parodied endlessly by the likes of Animaniacs, South Park and The Simpsons, among others, becoming the film’s most recognisable song. I do enjoy it, but one thing that’s always puzzled me is that Belle doesn’t actually get to eat much during it! So much for her “meal” – she eats, what, a couple of morsels and a sip of tea?
Something There was inserted into the film quite late, as it was written to replace the deleted Human Again. It’s surprising to think that it wasn’t always intended to be included, as it’s hard to imagine the film without it now – it feels so necessary, as it’s the point where Belle and Beast’s relationship begins to develop. Belle’s musical motif from her opening song is reprised, when she was singing about Prince Charming; now that she has encountered a real love interest, even though “he’s no Prince Charming,” the melody returns, connecting the Beast with her dreams of a better life. One line, “new and a bit alarming,” proved a tricky one for O’Hara to nail. Although he was very ill by this stage, one of Ashman’s final notes to her was given over the phone from hospital: “Tell Paige… Streisand.” She knew immediately what he meant – “New and a bit alarming” – and was able to perform the rest of the song with no trouble. It was apparently O’Hara’s idea to have Robby Benson be included in the song as a duet between Belle and the Beast and it’s the only time he sings in the whole film; O’Hara actually had to point out Benson’s musical theatre background to the filmmakers, as they were unaware of his singing abilities. Combined, O’Hara and Benson’s vocals span about two octaves from the low note of G3 to the high note of E5. The song is an enjoyable ensemble piece which shows off everybody’s vocals nicely and it expertly navigates the budding romance between Belle and the Beast, capturing their confusion and hesitation.
Human Again is a somewhat problematic song from the film’s midpoint which was cut out of the original theatrical release, but has been reinstated on all home media releases since the early 2000s. It was put back into the film because of its success in the stage production on Broadway, after the creators were inspired by George Lucas’s similar post-release editing of his Star Wars films. This late reinsertion causes the scene to look subtly different from the rest of the film – more polished and pristine – but it’s nothing too jarring and they actually did an impressive job of working it back in. It feels fairly seamless, coming hot on the heels of Something There, in part because all of the necessary voice actors were able to return to reprise their roles for it (no need for bad imitations). It doesn’t add much to the film’s plot, but it does have the benefit of adding some character development for the various servants, exploring their dreams and motivations for when they get out of their enchanted state. We are reminded in the song that the fates of the household members are all linked to the Beast’s, which raises the stakes a bit more. On top of that, it’s a great tune, with a lilting, waltzing rhythm to it and some excellent backing vocals paired with very “Disney” animation (just look at all those dancing brooms).
If Be Our Guest is the film’s face, Beauty and the Beast is its heart. This gentle ballad managed to solidify itself amongst the many timeless songs in the canon as a true Disney classic, after audiences were charmed by Angela Lansbury’s understated and moving performance. The song is reminiscent of Cliff Edwards’s number from Pinocchio, When You Wish Upon a Star; they’re both quiet and soothing, yet at the same time both are so memorable that the original versions can never be topped. The song was written in the key of G-flat major with Lansbury’s voice spanning two octaves (a recurring theme with the songs, you’ll notice) and features several chord changes with lots of romantic woodwind and violins.
At first, Lansbury was reluctant to do this number, as she felt it wasn’t the right style for her voice. Ever ready to help, Howard Ashman recorded a demo of himself performing the song in the little-old-lady style that he wanted and sent it to her, which reassured her. Even then, the problems weren’t over; on the day she was due to record it, Lansbury’s flight was delayed by a bomb scare, leaving the staff wondering if she would make it before the orchestra had to leave. Thankfully, she did, and reportedly reduced everyone in the studio to tears with her rendition, which she nailed in the one take she was asked to do.
So simple and yet so impactful, the song is about pure love – it is undoubtedly the best love ballad Disney have ever produced. Alan Menken revealed that the writing process for the song was the most time he had ever devoted to a single piece and he designed it to resemble a lullaby, sharing the idea with Ashman that the song “could have a life outside the movie.” In the words of Charles Solomon, it’s “gentle and small,” but Lansbury’s voice lends it a “wisdom” that resonates with the audience because it offers a timeless perspective on love – that of an old woman who’s already seen it many times in her life. The song expresses the eternal nature of love, portraying Belle and the Beast as one in a never-ending chain of couples united across history. The song deservedly won the Oscar for Best Original Song that year, beating out the film’s own Belle and Be Our Guest. Touchingly, it was accepted on Ashman’s behalf by his long-time romantic partner, Bill Lauch (Ashman himself had sadly passed away nearly a year earlier).
The final song of the film is the Mob Song, which serves as even more of a villain song than Gaston and demonstrates how dangerous an adversary Gaston himself has become over the course of the film. Ashman once again showed off his skill for lyricism with lots of allusions to other works; the line “Screw your courage to the sticking place” is a nod to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, while “Fifty Frenchmen can’t be wrong” sounds like something from a 1929 Cole Porter musical. There is an ominous, rising tension throughout the number, building and building on the sensation that something huge is going to happen. The psychological undertones are pretty disturbing, showing us how easily a crowd can be manipulated into becoming something monstrous. Very intense and dramatic, it makes a great piece with which to close the film’s strong collection of songs and really helps to create the right atmosphere for the final scenes. Apparently, it was revealed later that Ashman viewed the Beast’s curse as an allegory for AIDS, while the Mob Song with its cries of “Kill the beast” was inspired by the public sentiment against AIDS and its sufferers at the time.
The film garnered no less than three Academy Award nominations for the Best Original Song prize, which concerned producer Don Hahn as he felt that this would cause confusion among audiences and voters and may prevent any of the songs from winning. In order to prevent this, Disney fought hard to get Beauty and the Beast the award and arranged for a pop rendition of it to be released as a commercial single, which they hoped would persuade voters to choose it.
To perform the single, Alan Menken suggested a young and unknown Céline Dion – he was a fan of her music and even wrote her a personal letter of approval. Dion was hesitant at first, because she had just recently been fired from recording the theme for Don Bluth’s An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), where she was replaced by Linda Ronstadt. However, with Menken’s encouragement, she accepted, and Peabo Bryson was brought on board to sing it with her as a duet, since he was the better-known of the two at the time. This jazzier version of the song was done in the key of F Major and features some very nineties instruments like the electric oboe, keyboards and synthesizers and an acoustic guitar, as well as lots of drums (which are notably absent from much of the rest of the soundtrack). Although the cover received mixed reviews at the time, with most people preferring Lansbury’s original, I adore it. Dion and Bryson do a phenomenal job with it and their rendition is achingly beautiful – perhaps I’ve just got bad taste, but I find that it moves me much more than Lansbury’s did (although I do enjoy hers too, don’t get me wrong). I even chose this as my third favourite credits song from an animated film, out of fifty selections; I just like it that much.
The cover went on to become an international pop hit and won the pair a Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Vocal Performance. They also performed an altered version of it with Lansbury at the 1992 Academy Awards. Most significantly, this song sparked off a trend for Disney films ending with sparkly pop ballads, or “Award Bait Songs,” which ran well into the 2000s. The song was later covered again by Jordin Sparks for the 2010 DVD release, and for the 2017 remake Ariana Grande and John Legend took a crack at it (not my cup of tea, but if you like it that’s fair enough).
There’s not much more to be said about the voice acting or the writing that I haven’t already discussed above – in short, everybody does an absolutely terrific job with their material and aside from a few confusing plot holes, the writing for the film is also very strong.
Final Verdict –
The production of Beauty and the Beast was marred by tragedy, with the illness and eventual passing of songwriter Howard Ashman at the age of just forty due to compilations resulting from the AIDS virus, which had been causing devastation throughout the eighties. Shortly before Ashman’s death, an early test-screening of the film had enthusiastic reactions, so members of the film’s team went to visit him in the hospital to tell him. Don Hahn told him that “the film would be a great success. Who’d have thought it?” and Ashman, barely able to speak, whispered, “I would.”
The world was robbed of an incredible artistic talent far too early, and Ashman’s influence on the Disney Renaissance really cannot be underestimated. The film is dedicated to his memory, and for what it’s worth, I’d like to dedicate this review to him as well.
As we all know, the film was received with rapture upon its release, with nearly all the reviews ecstatic over it and audiences hailing it as a sensation. It earned praise from the likes of Siskel & Ebert, Janet Maslin and even animation legend Chuck Jones, among others, solidifying Disney’s newly regained reputation as the top dogs in the field. The film was marketed in a more adult way as a “date movie” (as you can see from the poster), with lots of pre-release engagements building up some strong word-of-mouth buzz for it, and the film was thus taken much more seriously than earlier efforts had been.
One of those early engagements was a September entry in the New York Film Festival, a first for an animated Disney film. Although it was deemed a “work in progress” with roughly seventy percent of it animated, it still received a ten-minute standing ovation from the audience, a moment which greatly encouraged the artists as the film’s official premiere drew near. Some people consider this event to be the key factor which led to the later Oscar nod, because it put the film on the map as something to be taken seriously.
Yep, you knew this was coming. Beauty and the Beast’s nomination for the Oscar for Best Picture may be common knowledge, but there’s no way to overstate the significance of the event – it was an unprecedented moment at the time, the very first time an animated film had been honoured in such a prestigious way. (Funnily enough, it was similar in some ways to the actual winner, Silence of the Lambs, which also featured a strange attraction between a beautiful young woman and a mysterious monster). Only two animated films have been accorded the same honour since – Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010), both from Pixar – but that was only after the field of nominees was expanded from five, and Beauty and the Beast remains the only hand-drawn film to get the nod.
Of course, the accolades didn’t stop there. Beauty and the Beast received four Academy Award nominations in total, for Best Sound, Best Music, Best Original Song (for three different songs) and Best Picture, winning for Best Song and Best Music. It was also nominated for BAFTAs, Saturn Awards, Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, Grammy Awards, Hugo Awards and PGA Awards. It landed the Golden Globes for Original Score and Original Song, the Annie Awards for Best Animated Feature and Outstanding Individual Achievement in the Field of Animation (for Glen Keane, a well-deserved award!), an ASCAP Award, a BMI Film Music Award, DFWFCA Awards, a Golden Screen Award, A KCFCC Award, a LAFCA Award, a Golden Reel Award, a National Board of Review Award, a National Film Preservation Board Award and a Young Artist Award… Yeah, you get the point. People simply couldn’t get enough of it.
The film was released on VHS in 1992 as part of the Walt Disney Classics series and became one of the best-selling tapes ever released. That version contained a minor edit: two skulls which appeared in Gaston’s eyes as he fell to his death were removed, but they were reinstated in all future versions. The “work in progress” version from the New York Film Festival also got a VHS and Laserdisc release at that time. The special edition DVD/VHS release followed in 2002, with a Diamond Edition DVD and Blu-ray combo arriving in 2010. Most recently, a 25th anniversary Signature Edition was released on Digital HD in 2016, followed by another DVD/Blu-ray combo pack.
Perhaps inevitably, the film, referred to by some critics as the best Broadway show that wasn’t even on Broadway, became Disney’s first Broadway musical to be adapted from one of their animated films. It opened at the Palace Theatre in 1994 and ran until 2007, getting a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Musical, although it received mixed reviews. To date (2017), it is the tenth longest-running Broadway show in history.
The success of the film spawned not just one but two direct-to-video midquels: Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997) and Beauty and the Beast: Belle’s Magical World (1998), both of which take place in the timeline of the original. (I think it goes without saying that both are dreadful and nothing compared to the original). There was also a spin-off TV series called Sing Me a Story with Belle, which I have to admit I’d never heard of prior to this review.
In 2002, a restored and remastered version of the film (with Human Again specially animated and reinserted) was released to IMAX theatres, and then in 2012 it had a 3D restoration and release following the success of The Lion King’s the previous year. Also in 2002, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The most recent addition to the world of Beauty and the Beast was this year’s live-action remake, directed by Bill Condon and starring Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Emma Thompson, Josh Gad, Audra McDonald, Kevin Kline, Ian McKellen, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Alan Menken returned to work on the score for it, providing new material which he’d written with his frequent collaborator, Tim Rice. I definitely consider it inferior in most respects – there’s too much extra stuff jammed in and the things taken from the original are not done as well – but I will say this much for it: it has another charming credits song from Céline Dion, How Does a Moment Last Forever?
So! That’s Beauty and the Beast for you. At the risk of running the theme into the ground, it’s extremely good and involved the combined talents of hundreds of gifted artists, each of whom put their heart and soul into the project. Howard Ashman in particular made invaluable contributions to almost every aspect of the production and the film thus benefits from his considerable theatrical talents and experience. With a compelling story, wonderful songs, a moving score and well-developed characters, there’s plenty to love about this one and if you’re unfortunate enough not to have seen it yet, I urge you to seek it out as soon as you can – trust me, you won’t regret it!
Thanks for sticking me through this whole thing; I know it was a long one! Next week’s review will be of Aladdin, and I have a First Thoughts post coming up too (as long as life doesn’t get too hectic). See you again soon as we head further into the Disney Renaissance!
My Rating – 5/5
References
I consulted my own books to research for this review, as well as some standard web sources:
The World History of Animation (2011) by Stephen Cavalier
The Art of Walt Disney (2011 ed.) by Christopher Finch
Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters (1998 ed.) by John Grant
Tale as Old as Time: The Art and Making of Beauty and the Beast (2010 ed.) by Charles Solomon
Disney’s Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse to Hercules (1997 ed.) by Bob Thomas
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1396348 – credit for poster
By Jean-Honoré Fragonard – wartburg.edu, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=611509 – credit for Fragonard painting
By User:Elementerre, edited by Atoma and Sir Gawain – This file was derived from: Chateau Chambord edit.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7430105 – credit for Chateau of Chambord image
By Jörg Bittner Unna – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39051880 – credit for Michelangelo sculpture
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33885418 – credit for Howard Ashman image
https://thedisneyodyssey.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/classic-no-30-beauty-and-the-beast-1991/ – the Disney Odyssey’s review
https://unshavedmouse.com/2013/05/30/disney-reviews-with-the-unshaved-mouse-30-beauty-and-the-beast/ – the Unshaved Mouse’s review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syYCO0QVkZo – Lindsay Ellis’s review
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_(1991_film) – wiki page
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101414/ – IMDB profile
Feeling Animated 
Been waiting for this one as it’s my fave Disney film!
You did a great job analyzing the film and I love how you defended Belle from the “Stockholm Syndrome” claim that people blame her for and mentioned how she’s always in charge of her decisions and never forced or victimized to do anything.
I never found LeFou or the Gaston song to be even remotely gay; I just find it a fun song to sing to cheer someone up.
And ‘The Golden Ass’ sounds like a book that you wouldn’t want to read, lol!
Are you a fan of the original Broadway songs?
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Mine too! You can tell I got a bit carried away lol, I think this is my longest review yet (must try to get the others under control).
Thanks! I know, people just assume that “Disney princess = passive and weak” but most of them are actually very active agents in their stories. It sure doesn’t sound like Stockholm Syndrome when she’s saying “I don’t want to have anything to do with him!”
Haha I wasn’t criticising, I love the song a lot. Just something I noticed here and there… “And they’ll tell you whose team they’d prefer to be oooonnnn!” Good old Ashman haha, he knew what he was doing. It certainly does cheer you up!
Yeah haha, what in the world were those Romans getting up to?
You know I have to admit, I’ve not seen the stage show yet. I’ve seen Aladdin though, and I wish they’d left “Proud of Your Boy” in the film! I do enjoy “Human Again” though, even though I know a lot don’t, it’s so much fun and gives the servants a moment to shine.
Glad you enjoyed the article, I appreciate all the support!
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I’ve never seen the stage show either, but I’ve heard the songs on YouTube and they’re mostly really good.
Thank you for all the Disney Canon reviews!
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I have to confess that I didn’t grow up with this one; I saw it once on “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and then didn’t see it again until late in high school, when I first watched the Platinum Edition DVD*. Of course, after watching it so many more times since then, I greatly appreciate it both for its own merits and its key role in the history of Disney Animation, but perhaps because of the aforementioned lack of familiarity, it ranks as my fourth favorite out of the “Fearsome Foursome” of the Disney Renaissance (LION KING takes #1 spot, LITTLE MERMAID #2, and ALADDIN #3).
A brief note about Monsieur D’Arque: I admit that Tony Jay’s performance was bang-on, but somehow, I don’t think that his voice was the best fit for the character, based on his design. Ian McDiarmid- Darth Sidious, himself- would have been a better choice, in my opinion.
*On the subject of which, I only watch the version that includes “Human Again,” just as how I only watch the version of POCAHONTAS that includes “If I Never Knew You.”
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Don’t worry, I didn’t either – I think I first saw it around the age of 19, and by then the film was already twenty years old itself. I think I’d rank those four with this as #1, Lion King #2, Mermaid #3 and Aladdin #4 (I would have put Mermaid last at one time, but after reviewing it in such depth I grew more fond of it).
Hm, yes, I see how that could have worked! He does have a good voice for that character design.
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