Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)

Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the 1756 fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont,[a] in turn an abridged version of the 1740 story by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. The film also incorporates ideas from the 1946 French film directed by Jean Cocteau.[6] The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (in their feature directorial debuts), and produced by Don Hahn, from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton.
Beauty and the Beast focuses on the relationship between the Beast, a prince who is magically transformed into a monster and his servants into household objects as punishment for his arrogance and cruelty, and Belle, a young woman whom he imprisons in his castle in exchange for her father's freedom. To break the curse, the Beast must learn to love Belle and earn her love in return before the last petal from an enchanted rose falls, or else he will remain a monster forever. The film stars Paige O'Hara and Robby Benson as the voices of Belle and the Beast, respectively, as well as the ensemble voices of Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Jesse Corti, Rex Everhart, Jo Anne Worley, and Angela Lansbury.[7]
Walt Disney first attempted to adapt Beauty and the Beast into an animated film during the 1930s and 1950s, but was unsuccessful. Following the success of The Little Mermaid (1989), Walt Disney Pictures decided to adapt the fairy tale, which Richard Purdum originally conceived as a non-musical period drama. After seeing a test reel, Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg scrapped Purdum's idea and ordered that the film be a musical similar to The Little Mermaid instead.[7] Composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, both of whom previously worked on The Little Mermaid, returned to write this film's songs, and Menken also composed the film's score. Ashman, who additionally served as the film's executive producer, died of AIDS-related complications eight months before the film's release, and the film is thus dedicated to his memory.
Beauty and the Beast premiered as an unfinished film at the New York Film Festival on September 29, 1991, followed by its theatrical release as a completed film at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 13. The film grossed $331 million at the box office worldwide on a $25 million budget and received widespread acclaim for its romantic narrative, animation (particularly the ballroom scene), characters, and musical numbers. Beauty and the Beast won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, the first animated film ever to win that category. It also became the first animated film ever to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 64th Academy Awards. The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for its title song and received additional nominations for Best Original Song (for "Belle" and "Be Our Guest") and Best Sound. In April 1994, Beauty and the Beast became Disney's first animated film to be adapted into a Broadway musical, which ran until 2007.
An IMAX version of the film was released in 2002, including the new song "Human Again", originally an eight-minute storyboarded musical sequence ultimately replaced with "Something There", but later revised in the 1994 musical as a five-minute piece. That same year, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[8][9] After the success of the 3D re-release of The Lion King, the film was reissued in 3D in 2012.[10] In 2014, Time magazine ranked Beauty and the Beast as the greatest film of the Disney Renaissance[11] and one of the greatest animated films of all time.
Other derived works and material inspired by the film include a 2017 live-action remake directed by Bill Condon, along with other remakes, released on March 17, 2017, to generally positive reviews; as well as a 2022 musical presentation of the film on ABC as part of The Wonderful World of Disney.
== Plot[edit] ==
An enchantress disguised as an old beggar woman arrives at a castle and offers a selfish prince an enchanted rose if he shelters her from the storm. When he scornfully declines, she reveals her true form and transforms him into a beast and his servants into household objects. For the curse to be broken, the prince must learn to love someone and earn that person's love before the last petal of the rose falls; otherwise, he will remain a beast forever.
Several years later, in a nearby village, Belle, the bookworm daughter of eccentric inventor Maurice, dreams of adventure while constantly rejecting advances from Gaston, an arrogant hunter. One day, Maurice travels to a local fair to present his latest invention, a wood-chopping machine, but becomes lost in the forest. Upon seeking refuge in the Beast's castle, he is eventually detained for trespassing. After Belle finds Maurice locked in the castle dungeon, she offers to take his place as a prisoner; the Beast agrees.
Belle meets the castle's servants, including candelabra Lumière, mantel clock Cogsworth, teapot Mrs. Potts, and her son Chip, a teacup. When she finds the enchanted rose, the Beast angrily forces her to flee outside. Wolves ambush Belle, and the Beast rescues her, injuring himself. As she nurses his wounds, they develop a rapport.
In the village, Maurice fails to convince the townsfolk of the Beast. Hearing Maurice's statements, Gaston bribes Monsieur D'Arque, the warden of the local insane asylum, to have Maurice declared insane and locked up, which Gaston will use to blackmail Belle into marrying him in exchange for Maurice's release. Before they can act, Maurice leaves to attempt a rescue alone.
Belle discovers Maurice's predicament via a magic mirror. The Beast releases Belle to rescue him. Returning to town, Belle reveals the Beast via the mirror, shocking the townsfolk and proving her father's sanity. Realizing she has fallen for the Beast, Gaston jealously has her thrown into the cellar with Maurice and rallies the villagers to slay the Beast. Chip, who stowed away when Belle left, frees the two with Maurice's machine.
As the castle's servants defeat the villagers, Gaston attacks the depressed Beast. The Beast regains his spirit upon seeing Belle return and spares Gaston's life, but Gaston fatally stabs him before losing his footing and falling to his demise.[b] Belle tearfully professes her love to a dying Beast as the last petal falls, which undoes the curse, reviving the Beast and restoring him and his servants to their human forms. The prince and Belle later host a ball for the kingdom.
== Voice cast[edit] ==
Main article: List of Disney's Beauty and the Beast characters
* Paige O'Hara as Belle,[13] a bibliophilic young woman who seeks adventure and offers her own freedom to the Beast in return for her father's. In an effort to "enhance" the character from the original story, the filmmakers felt that Belle should be "unaware" of her own beauty and made her "a little odd".[14] Wise recalls casting O'Hara because of a "unique tone" she had, "a little bit of Judy Garland", after whose appearance Belle was modeled.[15] James Baxter and Mark Henn served as the supervising animators for Belle.
* Robby Benson as the Beast,[13] a young prince who is transformed into a talking beast by an enchantress as punishment for his arrogance and selfishness. The animators drew him with the head structure and horns of an American bison, the arms and body of a bear, the eyebrows of a gorilla, the teeth and mane of a lion, the tusks of a wild boar, and the legs and tail of a wolf. Chris Sanders, one of the film's storyboard artists and visual development artists, drafted the designs for the Beast and came up with designs based on birds, insects, and fish before coming up with something close to the final design. Glen Keane, supervising animator for the Beast, refined the design by going to the zoo and studying the animals on which the Beast was based.[12] Benson commented, "There's a rage and torment in this character I've never been asked to use before."[16] The filmmakers commented that "everybody was big fee-fi-fo-fum and gravelly" while Benson had the "big voice and the warm, accessible side" so that "you could hear the prince beneath the fur".[12]
* Richard White as Gaston,[13] a hunter who vies for Belle's hand in marriage. He serves as a foil personality to the Beast, who was originally as egotistical as Gaston prior to saving Belle from the wolves. Gaston's supervising animator, Andreas Deja, was pressed by Jeffrey Katzenberg to make Gaston handsome in contrast to the traditional appearance of a Disney villain, an assignment he found difficult at first. In the beginning, Gaston is depicted as more of a narcissist than a villain, but later he threatens to put Maurice in a mental institution if Belle does not marry him, and eventually leads all the villagers to kill the Beast, enraged that Belle would love a beast more than him.[17]
* Jerry Orbach as Lumière,[18] the kind-hearted but rebellious French-accented maître d' of the Beast's castle, who has been transformed into a candelabra. He has a habit of disobeying his master's strict rules, sometimes causing tension between them, but the Beast often turns to him for advice. He is depicted as flirtatious, as he is frequently seen with the Featherduster and immediately takes a liking to Belle. A running gag throughout the film is Lumière burning Cogsworth. Nik Ranieri served as the supervising animator for Lumière.
* David Ogden Stiers as Cogsworth,[19] the Beast's majordomo, the head butler of the household staff and Lumière's best friend, who has been turned into a mantel clock. He is extremely loyal to the Beast so as to save himself and anyone else any trouble, often leading to friction between himself and Lumière. Will Finn served as the supervising animator for Cogsworth. Stiers also narrates the prologue.
* Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts,[20] the housekeeper, turned into a teapot, who takes a motherly attitude toward Belle. The filmmakers went through several names for Mrs. Potts, such as "Mrs. Chamomile", before Ashman suggested the use of simple and concise names for the household objects.[12] David Pruiksma served as the supervising animator for Mrs. Potts.
* Bradley Pierce as Chip,[21] Mrs. Potts's son, who has been transformed into a teacup. Originally intended to only have one line, the filmmakers were impressed with Pierce's performance and expanded the character's role significantly, eschewing a mute Music Box character.[12] Pruiksma also served as the supervising animator for Chip.
* Rex Everhart as Maurice,[13] Belle's inventor father. The villagers see him as insane for crafting devices believed impossible to construct in reality, but his loyal daughter believes he will be famous one day. Ruben A. Aquino served as the supervising animator for Maurice.
* Jesse Corti as LeFou,[13] Gaston's sidekick. He looks up to Gaston as his hero, and sings a song with the other villagers to cheer him up. His name is French for "The Madman" and also a phonetic play on "The Fool". Chris Wahl served as the supervising animator for LeFou.
* Jo Anne Worley as the Wardrobe,[22][23][24] the castle's authority over fashion, and a former opera singer, who has been turned into a wardrobe. The character of Wardrobe was introduced by visual development artist Sue C. Nichols to the then entirely male cast of servants, and was originally a more integral character named "Madame Armoire". Wardrobe is known as "Madame de la Grande Bouche" (Madame Big Mouth) in the stage adaptation of the film and is the only major enchanted object character whose human form does not appear in the film. Tony Anselmo served as the supervising animator for the Wardrobe.
* Hal Smith as Philippe,[25] Belle's horse. Russ Edmonds served as the supervising animator for Philippe.
* Mary Kay Bergman and Kath Soucie as the Bimbettes,[26] a trio of village maidens who constantly fawn over Gaston, known as the "Silly Girls" or "Les Filles De La Ville" (the village girls)[27] in the stage adaptation.
* Jack Angel, Phil Proctor, Bill Farmer, and Patrick Pinney as Tom, Dick, Stanley, and Gramps, respectively, Gaston and LeFou's circle of friends.
* Brian Cummings as the Stove,[28] the castle's chef who has been transformed into a stove. He is named Chef Bouche in 1998's Belle's Magical World.
* Alvin Epstein as the Bookseller,[29] the owner of a book shop in Belle's village.
* Tony Jay as Monsieur D'Arque,[30] the sadistic warden of the Asylum de Loons. Gaston bribes him to help in his plan to blackmail Belle.
* Alec Murphy as the Baker,[31] the owner of a bakery in Belle's village.
* Kimmy Robertson as the Featherduster,[32] a maid and Lumière's sweetheart, who has been turned into a feather duster. She is never mentioned by name in the 1991 film (listed as Featherduster in the credits); Babette is the name given to this character later in the 1994 stage adaptation of the film; Fifi in the 1998 animated musical film Belle's Magical World and Plumette in the 2017 live-action remake.
* Frank Welker as Sultan,[33] the castle's pet dog turned into a footstool.
== Production[edit] ==
=== Early versions[edit] ===
Following the widespread critical and commercial success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Walt Disney sought out other stories to adapt into feature films, with Beauty and the Beast being among the stories he considered.[14][34] Attempts to develop the Beauty and the Beast story into a film were made in the 1930s and 1950s, but were ultimately given up because it "proved to be a challenge" for the story team.[14] Peter M. Nichols states Disney may later have been discouraged by Jean Cocteau having already done his 1946 version.[35]
Decades later, as Who Framed Roger Rabbit was nearing completion in 1987, the Disney studio resurrected Beauty and the Beast as a project for the satellite animation studio it had set up in London, England to work on Roger Rabbit. Richard Williams, who had directed the animated portions of Roger Rabbit, was approached to direct but declined in favor of continuing work on his long-gestating project The Thief and the Cobbler. In his place, Williams recommended his colleague, English animation director Richard Purdum, and work began under producer Don Hahn on a non-musical version of Beauty and the Beast set in 19th-century France.[36] At the behest of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Beauty and the Beast became the first Disney animated film to use a screenwriter. This was an unusual move for an animated film, which is traditionally developed on storyboards rather than in a scripted form. Linda Woolverton wrote the original draft of the story before storyboarding began, and worked with the story team to retool and develop the film.[37]
=== Script rewrite and musicalization[edit] ===
link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Annie_Awards_Jeffrey_Katzenberg.jpg|thumb|255x255px|Upon seeing the initial storyboard reels in 1989, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered that the film be scrapped and started over from scratch.
Upon seeing the initial storyboard reels in 1989, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg was dissatisfied with Purdum's idea and ordered that the film be scrapped and started over from scratch. A few months after starting anew, Purdum resigned as director. The studio had approached John Musker and Ron Clements to direct the film, but they turned down the offer, saying they were "tired" after just having finished directing Disney's recent success The Little Mermaid. Katzenberg then hired first-time feature directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. Wise and Trousdale had previously directed the animated sections of Cranium Command, a short film for a Disney EPCOT theme park attraction. In addition, wanting another musical film, Katzenberg asked songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who had written the song score for The Little Mermaid, to turn Beauty and the Beast into a Broadway-style musical film in the same vein as Mermaid. Ashman, who at the time had learned he was dying of complications from AIDS, had been working with Disney on a pet project of his, Aladdin, and only reluctantly agreed to join the struggling production team. To accommodate Ashman's failing health, pre-production of Beauty and the Beast was moved from London to the Residence Inn in Fishkill, New York, close to Ashman's New York City home.[36] Here, Ashman and Menken joined Wise, Trousdale, Hahn, and Woolverton in retooling the film's script.[14][37] Since the original story had only two major characters, the filmmakers enhanced them, added new characters in the form of enchanted household items who "add warmth and comedy to a gloomy story" and guide the audience through the film, and added a "real villain" in the form of Gaston.[14]
These ideas were somewhat similar to elements of the 1946 French film version of Beauty and the Beast, which introduced the character of Avenant, an oafish suitor somewhat similar to Gaston,[38] as well as inanimate objects coming to life in the Beast's castle.[39] The animated objects were, however, given distinct personalities in the Disney version. By early 1990, Katzenberg had approved the revised script, and storyboarding began again.[14][37] The production flew story artists back and forth between California and New York for storyboard approvals from Ashman, though the team was not told the reason why.[14]
=== Casting and recording[edit] ===
Disney had originally considered casting Jodi Benson from The Little Mermaid as Belle.[40] They eventually decided upon Broadway actress and singer Paige O'Hara in favor of having a heroine who sounded "more like a woman than a girl".[41] According to co-director Kirk Wise, O'Hara was given the role because she "had a unique quality, a tone she would hit that made her special",[42] reminiscent to that of American actress and singer Judy Garland.[43] O'Hara, who, after reading about the film in The New York Times,[44] competed for the role against 500 hopefuls,[45] believes the fact that lyricist Howard Ashman admired her cast recording of the musical Show Boat proved integral in her being cast.[46] Laurence Fishburne, Val Kilmer and Mandy Patinkin were originally considered to voice the Beast, the role was eventually given to actor Robby Benson.[47] John Cleese was originally intended to voice Cogsworth, but later turned it down to voice Cat. R. Waul in the Universal Pictures animated film An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and the role was eventually given to David Ogden Stiers.[47] Julie Andrews was originally considered to voice Mrs. Potts, but the role was eventually given to Angela Lansbury.[citation needed]
=== Animation[edit] ===
link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beauty_and_the_Beast_screenshot.jpg|left|thumb|270x270px|A frame from the "Beauty and the Beast" ballroom dance sequence. The background was animated using computer generated imagery which, when the traditionally animated characters are composited against it using Pixar's CAPS system, gives the illusion of a dollying film camera.
Production of Beauty and the Beast was to be completed on a compressed timeline of two years rather than the traditional four-year Disney Feature Animation production schedule; this was due to the loss of production time spent developing the earlier Purdum version of the film.[12] Most of the production was done at the main Feature Animation studio, housed in the Air Way facility in Glendale, California. A smaller team at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Lake Buena Vista, Florida assisted the California team on several scenes, particularly the "Be Our Guest" number.[14]
Beauty and the Beast was the second film, after The Rescuers Down Under, produced using CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), a digital scanning, ink, paint, and compositing system of software and hardware developed for Disney by Pixar.[14][36] The software allowed for a wider range of colors, as well as soft shading and colored line effects for the characters, techniques lost when the Disney studio abandoned hand inking for xerography in the early 1960s. CAPS/ink & paint also allowed the production crew to simulate multiplane effects: placing characters and/or backgrounds on separate layers and moving them towards/away from the camera on the Z-axis to give the illusion of depth, as well as altering the focus of each layer.[12]
In addition, CAPS/ink & paint allowed an easier combination of hand-drawn art with computer-generated imagery, which before had to be plotted to animation paper and then xeroxed and painted traditionally.[14][48] This technique was put to significant use during the "Beauty and the Beast" waltz sequence, in which Belle and Beast dance through a computer-generated ballroom as the camera dollies around them in simulated 3D space.[12][14] The filmmakers had originally decided against the use of computers in favor of traditional animation, but later, when the technology had improved, decided it could be used for the one scene in the ballroom.[35] Before that, CGI environments had first been printed out as wireframe, but this was the first time Disney made use of 3D rendering.[49] The success of the ballroom sequence helped convince studio executives to further invest in computer animation.[50] The technology hardware that was used for the CGI was SGI, and the software that was used is Pixar's RenderMan.[citation needed]
The final dance between Belle and the Prince was reused from the final dance sequence between Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip from the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. According to Trousdale, this was done because production of the film was nearing the deadline, and this was the easiest way to do that sequence.[51]
=== Music[edit] ===
See also: Beauty and the Beast (1991 soundtrack)
Ashman and Menken wrote the Beauty song score during the pre-production process in Fishkill, the opening operetta-styled "Belle" being their first composition for the film. Other songs included "Be Our Guest", sung (in its original version) to Maurice by the objects when he becomes the first visitor to eat at the castle in a decade, "Gaston", a solo for the swaggering villain and his bumbling sidekick, "Human Again", a song describing Belle and Beast's growing love from the objects' perspective, the love ballad "Beauty and the Beast (Tale as Old as Time)" and the climactic "The Mob Song". As story and song development came to a close, full production began in Burbank while voice and song recording began in New York City.[14] The Beauty songs were mostly recorded live with the orchestra and the voice cast performing simultaneously rather than overdubbed separately, in order to give the songs a cast album-like "energy" the filmmakers and songwriters desired.[12]
During the course of production, many changes were made to the structure of the film, necessitating the replacement and re-purposing of songs. After screening a mostly animated version of the "Be Our Guest" sequence, story artist Bruce Woodside suggested that the objects should be singing the song to Belle rather than her father. Wise and Trousdale agreed, and the sequence and song were retooled to replace Maurice with Belle. The film's title song went through a noted bit of uncertainty during production. Originally conceived as a rock-oriented song, it was changed to a slow, romantic ballad. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken asked Angela Lansbury to perform the song, but she did not think her voice was suited for the melody.
When she voiced her doubts, Menken and Ashman asked her for at least one take and told her to perform the song as she saw fit. Lansbury reportedly reduced everyone in the studio to tears with her rendition, nailing the song in the one take asked of her. This version went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song. "Human Again" was dropped from the film before animation began, as its lyrics caused story problems about the timeline over which the story takes place.[14] This required Ashman and Menken to write a new song in its place. "Something There", in which Belle and Beast sing (via voiceover) of their growing fondness for each other, was composed late in production and inserted into the script in place of "Human Again".[12]
Menken would later revise "Human Again" for inclusion in the 1994 Broadway stage version of Beauty and the Beast, and another revised version of the song was added to the film itself in a new sequence created for the film's Special Edition re-release in 2002.[12][14] Ashman died of AIDS-related complications at the age of 40 on March 14, 1991, eight months before the film's release. He never saw the finished film, though he did get to see it in its unfinished format. Ashman's work on Aladdin was completed by another lyricist, Tim Rice. Before Ashman's death, members of the film's production team visited him after the film's well-received first screening, with Don Hahn commenting that "the film would be a great success. Who'd have thought it?" Ashman replied, "I would".
A tribute to the lyricist was included at the end of the credits crawl: "To our friend, Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful. Howard Ashman 1950–1991".[36] A pop version of the "Beauty and the Beast" theme, performed by Céline Dion and Peabo Bryson over the end credits, was released as a commercial single from the film's soundtrack, supported with a music video. The Dion/Bryson version of "Beauty and the Beast" became an international pop hit and performed considerably well on charts around the world. The song became Dion's second single to land within the top-10 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number nine. The song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary chart. In Canada, "Beauty and the Beast" peaked at number two.[52][53] Outside of North America, the song peaked within the top ten in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, while peaking within the top twenty in Australia, Netherlands, and Ireland. The song sold over a million copies worldwide.[54] This version of the song was also nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Duo/Group Vocal Performance at the 35th Annual Grammy Awards, winning the latter.[55][56][57]
== Release[edit] ==
=== Work-in-progress and original theatrical run[edit] ===
In a first-time accomplishment for The Walt Disney Company, an unfinished version of Beauty and the Beast was shown at the New York Film Festival on September 29, 1991.[58] The film was deemed a "work in progress" because roughly only 70% of the animation had been completed; storyboards and pencil tests were used in replacement of the remaining 30%.[59] Additionally, certain segments of the film that had already been finished were reverted to previous stages of completion. At the end of the screening, Beauty and the Beast received a ten-minute-long standing ovation from the film festival audience.[36][60] The completed film was also screened out of competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival.[61] The finished film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on November 13, 1991, beginning a limited release before expanding wide on November 22,[60] along with An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.
=== Reissues[edit] ===
The film was restored and remastered for its New Year's Day, 2002 re-release in IMAX theatres in a special-edition edit, including a new musical sequence. For this version of the film, much of the animation was cleaned 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
Category:1991 cartoons
Category:Walt Disney Productions Cartoons