Gorgeous, moving film

Rating: 10/10 (23 August 1999)

When Walt Disney chose as a fairytale the subject for his first animated feature: `Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. The result was first screened in 1937. He revisited fairytales with `Cinderella', in 1950, and `Sleeping Beauty', in 1959. He never made another. Nor did his studio, until the release of `Beauty and the Beast', in 1991.
It's odd: because the fairytales Disney chose are poor ones, and the films I just mentioned are of value mainly because of the valiant way they overcome the limits imposed by their subject matter - and they don't always do so. The story of Beauty and the Beast, on the other hand, is one of the most beautiful folktales around. Somehow the studio managed to avoid it for fifty-four years. Perhaps it's a good thing they waited. `Beauty and the Beast' is a triumph, almost on the same level as the great films made in Disney's heyday (up to 1942), and considerably better than `Snow White'.
It's hard to say what makes it so good. It's just a touching love story with neither cloying sentimentality nor jarring irony. The animation is mostly very good - and the animation (and character design) of the Beast, the most important character, is inspired. Trousdale and Wise pace and shape the story in exactly the right way, adding detail to the original where necessary, leaving the heart of it unaltered. The occasional clumsiness is more than made up for by sheer sincerity. For the most part it's anything but clumsy.