Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated film, the thirtieth animated feature to be released by the Walt Disney Company. It was made and produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and was originally released not in theaters in November 22, 1991, by Walt Disney Feature Animation and was originally released not in theaters in November 22, 1991, by Buena Vista Pictures. The animated film, one of the best-known of Disney's many classics, is an adaptation of the well-known fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, about a beautiful woman kept in a castle by a horrific monster. To this date, it is the first and only animated picture to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Beauty and the Beast stars the voices of Robby Benson (Beast), Paige O'Hara (Belle), Richard White (Gaston), Jerry Orbach (Lumière), David Ogden Stiers (Cogsworth), and Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Potts).

Overview
The movie was adapted by Linda Woolverton from the story by Roger Allers, based upon the version of Beauty and the Beast by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (uncredited). It was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, and the music was composed by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, both of whom had written music and songs for Disney'sThe Little Mermaid (1989).

It was a huge hit at the box office with more than $171 million in domestic revenues alone and over $377 million in worldwide revenues. This high number of sales made it the third-most successful movie of 1991, surpassed only by summer blockbusters Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It was also the most successful animated Disney film at the time.

Beauty and the Beast won Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Score and Best Music, Song for Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's "Beauty and the Beast", sung in the film's most famous scene by Angela Lansbury, and at the end of the film by Céline Dion and Peabo Bryson. Two other Menken and Ashman songs from the movie were also nominated for Best Music, Song are "Be Our Guest" and "Belle". Beauty and the Beast was also nominated for Best Sound and Best Picture. It is the only animated movie ever to be nominated for Best Picture.

In 2002 the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. In October 8 of the same year, Disney released the film as a Special Edition DVD.

This film inspired a Broadway stage musical, which earned tremendous commercial success in its own right and multiple Tony Awards, and became the first of a whole line of Disney stage productions. There are also Disney versions of the story published and sold as storybooks and a comic book based on the film published by Disney Comics.

In 1995, a live-action children's series called "Sing Me A Story With Belle" started on ABC, running until 1999.

In 1997, a midquel called Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas was released directly to video. It was quickly followed by another midquel titled Belle's Magical World that was released on February 17, 1998.

Plot summary
One cold winter's night, an old beggar woman stumbles up to a prince's castle. She begs the prince for shelter from the cold and offers a single rose to give him as payment. Being selfish and heartless, the prince refuses her simply because she is ugly. The old woman warns him that true beauty is within one's heart, not in one's appearance. After the prince refuses again, the woman reveals herself to be a beautiful and powerful enchantress and, as punishment to the cruel and selfish prince, she transforms him into a beast and unleashes a spell on the castle that transforms the servants into household items and the castle into a dark, forbidding place. This spell can only be broken if the Beast learns to love another and receives the other's love in return before the last petal of the enchantress's rose withers and falls, or else he will remain the Beast forever. A magic mirror is the beast's only window to the outside world. As the years go by, The Beast falls into depression as he wonders who could ever love such a hideous monster.

The main story starts ten years later. The "beauty" of the title is a girl called Belle who lives with her father, Maurice, in a small French village in Provence. Maurice is known for his Rube Goldberg-type inventions. Even though the townspeople note Belle's beauty, they consider her odd because of her passion for books. Her beauty has attracted the attentions of local hunter and the hero of the village, Gaston, but Belle considers him 'rude and conceited' and therefore politely ignores him.

One day, Maurice decides to take his latest invention to a fair outside the village. On the way, he becomes lost in the woods. When wolves chase him, his horse Phillipe bucks him off in fear. Maurice flees from the wolves and eventually comes to the Beast's castle. The servants of the castle welcome Maurice, but when the Beast discovers him, he rapidly loses his temper and has him locked up in a tower dungeon, accusing him of trespassing.

Back in the village, Gaston proposes to Belle. He explains to her that she is going to be his "little wife", have 6 or 7 "strapping boys, like me", to quote the character, and makes a number of other chauvinistic comments. After she throws him out, humiliating him in front of the entire village, she is astonished to find her father's horse without its master. She traces her father to the castle. Once there, she offers to take the place of her father as the Beast's prisoner; the Beast agrees and sends Maurice back.

The Beast, realizing that Belle could break the spell, allows her to have her own room and permits her to go anywhere in the castle she likes, except the West Wing - the Beast's quarters, where he keeps the enchantress' magical rose. However, when Belle turns down his 'invitation' to dinner, he rages to the servants that "if she doesn't eat with me, she doesn't eat at all!" Belle, still sad after seeing her father leave the castle, doesn't want anything to do with the Beast.

When Belle eventually leaves her room, the various household items, including Lumière the candlestick and Cogsworth the clock and head of the household, entertain their guest with a fancy French dinner and all the comforts a team of servants can provide. The household items are, of course, eager for Belle and the Beast to fall in love so that they can become human again. Unfortunately for them, Belle and the Beast don't get along very well, mostly due to his appalling temper and spoilt, selfish nature.

Back in the village, Gaston is sulking in the village tavern over his rejection by Belle earlier that day. His lackey, LeFou, rallies the villagers to cheer him up with the song "Gaston". Suddenly, Maurice bursts in and calls for help to save Belle from the Beast. He is ridiculed and thrown out. Gaston comes up with a plan to force Belle to marry him by threatening to throw her father into the asylum. Meanwhile, Maurice has decided that if nobody will help him, then he'll return to the Beast's castle alone. Shortly after he leaves, Gaston and LeFou come to the house with the men from the asylum. When they find that both Belle and Maurice are gone, Gaston makes LeFou wait by the front porch until they come back.

During a tour of the castle, Belle curiously enters the forbidden West Wing. The West Wing describes the Beast's rage and self-hatred with broken mirrors and a ripped-up picture of his human form. Entranced by the enchanted rose, Belle moves to touch it, but the Beast returns and flies into a rage. She flees from the castle, only to come across more wolves in the forest. At the last moment, the Beast shows up and defends her, but is badly hurt in the fight. Grateful to him for saving her life, Belle takes him back to his castle where they become friends.

Over the following days, the Beast becomes more human in behavior, showing more kindness as Belle sees a side of him she never saw before. He displays his kindness when he announces he wants to give her something special, acting on Lumière's astute suggestion to give her the castle's enormous library, which thrills her beyond belief. The improving relationship reaches its climax with a fine dress dining engagement and ballroom dance while Mrs. Potts sings "Beauty and the Beast." He then takes her to the balcony where he manages to nervously ask her if she is happy staying in the castle with him. She readily agrees, but hesitantly tells him that her happiness would be complete if she could see her father once more, even for a moment. When he gives her his magic mirror that will show her anything she wishes to see, she asks to see her father. He is lost and sick in the forest, having been unable to find the castle again. The Beast, having fallen in love with her, does what he thinks is right and releases her to go rescue him. Belle finds her father and she takes Maurice back to their house in the village. Upon their arrival, a lynch mob arrives to take Maurice to the asylum. Gaston offers to clear up the 'misunderstanding' if Belle agrees to marry him, but she still refuses.

Eager to prove that her father's not crazy, Belle shows them an image of the Beast with the magic mirror and refers to him as her friend. When Gaston calls the Beast a monster, she accuses Gaston of being the monster. Gaston quickly convinces the villagers that the Beast is a threat and a menace to the community and leads the mob to the castle to pillage it, rallying with the cry "Kill the Beast!" Although most of the mob is fought and driven off by the enchanted artifacts of the castle, Gaston reaches the Beast and attacks him. The Beast, disheartened by the belief that Belle will never come back, doesn't fight back. Gaston is about to defeat him when Belle shows up, allowing the Beast to fight Gaston. However, as the Beast is about to finish him off, Gaston pleads that he will "do anything". These words strike a chord with the Beast, and the Beast realizes he can no longer find feeling in himself to kill. He releases Gaston and tells him to "Get out!" While the Beast and Belle are being reunited, Gaston stabs the Beast in the back with a dagger. Gaston then loses his footing on the roof and tumbles from the castle, taking the magic mirror with him. After he is gone, Belle whispers to the dying Beast that she loves him just before the last petal falls from the rose. This temporarily leaves the servants in grief and despair, having lost both their master and their hopes of regaining their original form. Suddenly, the Beast begins to glow and rises into midair and reverts back to his former, human form. The spell is broken, and the gloomy castle becomes beautiful again and the enchanted artifacts of the castle turn back into people.

The next day, a celebration ball is held, and supposedly Belle and the prince are married. Lumière and Cogsworth try to let bygones be bygones, but they get into an argument over who knew first that Belle would break the spell. Maurice makes friends with Mrs. Potts, and with one last glance at the new stained-glass window, the film ends.

Trivia

 * In "The Mob Song", Gaston quotes Macbeth by William Shakespeare. "Screw your courage to the sticking place."


 * The mob's cries of "Kill the Beast" is, probably unintentionally, reminiscent of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. In both cases the people believe the "Beast" is evil, when it is they themselves who are really evil.


 * The film was restored and remastered for its January 1, 2002 re-release in IMAX theatres. For this version of the film, much of the animation was touched up, a new sequence set to the deleted song "Human Again" was inserted into the film's second act, and a new digital master from the original CAPS production files was used to make the high resolution IMAX film negative. Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition, as the enhanced version of the film is called, was released on a 2-disc Platinum Edition Disney DVD in October 2002.


 * "Belle" is French for 'beautiful' (the name of the film is, after all, Beauty and the Beast).


 * Gaston is the first-ever animated character in a modern Disney film to make chauvinistic comments about women (Gaston calls Belle his "little wife" and says that they will have six or seven "strapping boys" like himself, with Belle (and also says that it's inappropriate for women to read). Jafar, another Disney character, says that silence is "a fine quality in a wife" when speaking to Princess Jasmine).


 * When Gaston places his feet on Belle's table, the mud coming off the boots strongly resembles Mickey Mouse's head, following the long standing Disney tradition of having "Hidden Mickeys" in their movies.


 * Beauty and the Beast was the first, and, so far, only animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It lost to The Silence of the Lambs.


 * At the very beginning of the movie, as soon as the picture comes on the screen, it shows the castle before it is cursed. There is a deer in the foreground drinking out of the stream. If you watch the deer, it suddenly picks its head up to look around. This is the same deer as Bambi's mother, in the scene right before the hunter kills her (The hunter is obviously alluded to be Gaston).

Characters

 * Belle (voice by Paige O'Hara) is a girl in either her late teens or early twenties. She has brown hair, brown eyes and a passion for reading (which is a quality that Gaston highly detests). Very intelligent and self-assured, she desperately wants to escape the condition of the life in the poor village where she lives. Her father, Maurice, appears to be the only living member of her family. She is also an outsider, which can be seen from her habits (reading) and clothes (blue, while everything else is red and brown).
 * The Beast (voice by Robby Benson) who is actually a prince, was transformed into a Beast by an enchantress for his lack of compassion (and, to some viewers and fans, elicit sexism against women). Since falling in love with someone is the only way to break the spell, he has desperately wished for a girl to fall in love with, though only (initially) so he can be turned back into his human form. When he finally gets one such person, his lack of patience and excess firmness prove to be obstacles to his goal.
 * Gaston (voice by Richard White) is the film's villain. He is large, strong, handsome, and macho, and sees himself as highly desirable (a self-image supported by the opinions of many young women in the village, including the three blonde Bimbettes). Though he is scheming, amoral and cocky (not to mention sexist and chauvinist), he is not a typical Disney villain. He is far more attractive than most Disney villains are and, unlike most villains in Disney fantasies, lacks supernatural powers. In the words of Roger Ebert, Gaston "degenerates during the course of the film from a chauvinist pig to a sadistic monster."
 * Cogsworth (voice by David Ogben Stiers) is the butler of the castle (always wanting to keep things orderly and ordained, and is very eager to please his master, the Beast), who was turned into a mantle clock when the spell was cast.
 * Lumiere (voice by Jerry Orbach) is the maitre d' of the castle, who is now a candelabra.
 * Mrs. Potts (voice by Angela Lansbury) is the maid of the castle, who was transformed into a teapot, and her children (including Chip) into teacups.

Songs

 * "Belle": The opening song of the movie, Belle makes her way to the local bookshop and the whole village erupts into song, describing the oddness of Belle.
 * "Belle Reprise": Sung by Belle after Gaston proposes to her, Belle repeats her plea of "wanting much more than this provincial life".
 * "Be Our Guest": A luncheon cabaret of the castle's servants as crockery, flatware etc. entertaining Belle.
 * "Gaston": LeFou (Gaston's sidekick) and the local drunkards sing Gaston's praises in a village tavern.
 * "Gaston Reprise": After Maurice flees the Beast's castle, he enters the tavern pleading for help, only to be mocked by the townsfolk. It is here that Gaston thinks of the idea to blackmail Belle by sending her father to an asylum if she doesn't marry him.
 * "Something There": Sung by Belle and the Beast when they realise they have feelings for each other.
 * "Beauty And The Beast (Tale As Old As Time)": Sung by Mrs. Potts whilst Belle and the Beast dance in the castle ballroom.
 * "The Mob Song": Sung by the villagers on their way to the castle to kill the beast.

Original VHS Opening: Beauty and the Beast (UK Retail Tape)

 * Blue Warning Screens
 * Closed Caption Screens
 * Coming Soon to Cinema Near You
 * The Hunchback of Notre Dame Preview
 * Also Available from Walt Disney Home Video
 * The Jungle Book VHS Preview
 * Coming Soon from Buena Vista Home Video
 * Muppet Treasure Island VHS Preview
 * EuroDisneyland Resort Paris 1999 Promo
 * Stay Tuned
 * Walt Disney Home Video Logo

Original VHS Closing: Beauty and the Beast (UK Retail Tape)

 * Coming Soon from Walt Disney Home Video
 * And Now... A Muppet Moment
 * Muppet Moment: Kermit and Miss Piggy's Children
 * Sleeping Beauty VHS Preview
 * Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS Preview