1. Beauty and the Beast 1991 Film
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated film, the thirtieth animated feature to be produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. The film was originally released to theaters on November 13, 1991 by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. The animated film, one of the best-known of the Disney studio's films, 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. It is the first and only animated picture to ever be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Beauty and the Beast features 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).
Beauty and the Beast ranked #22 on the American Film Institute's list of best musicals and #34 on its list of the best romantic American movies. On the list of the greatest songs from American movies, Beauty and the Beast ranked #62. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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 in the English version of the film, but credited in the French version as writer of the novel). 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's The Little Mermaid.
It was a significant success 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 a Tony Award, and became the first of a whole line of Disney stage productions. It will close in June to make room for another production, The Little Mermaid. 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 syndication, running until 1999.
In November 11, 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 ghastly spell on the castle that transforms the servants into anthropomorphic household items and the castle grounds 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 (Belle). 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, and believing that he has come to laugh at the "beast" (referring to himself)
Back in the village, Gaston proposes to Belle. He explains to her that she is going to be his "little wife", have six or seven "strapping boys, like me", to quote the character, and makes a number of other chauvinistic comments, such as how she will rub his feet and rid them of his callouses and bunions after he comes home from work, and how she, being a good wife will cook and clean for him. After she throws him out, humiliating him in front of the entire village (Belle Reprise), she is astonished to find her father's horse without his 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, much to the distress and heartbreak of both Belle, because she was not allowed to say goodbye to her ill father, and of Maurice, because he has "lived his life", and does not want his daughter exposed to the Beast.
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.
Later, Belle, still sad after seeing her father leave the castle, doesn't want anything to do with the Beast, and turns down his "invitation" to dinner. At this, he rages to the servants that "if she doesn't eat with me, she doesn't eat at all!"
The famous ballroom dance sequence from the second act of Beauty and 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 (Be Our Guest). 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 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 (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 (Gaston Reprise). 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, bowing to her inquisitive nature, discovers the West wing a dark, lonesome, shadowy and disturbingly scary place. There, she sees evidence of the Beast's rage and self-hatred: The room is littered with slashed furniture, broken mirrors and a ripped-up picture of his pre-enchanted human form - where she notes his penetratingly blue eyes. Entranced by the enchanted rose, Belle moves to touch it, only to be stopped and confronted by an enraged Beast. 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 after winning the fight. Grateful to him for saving her life, Belle takes him back to his castle, where they start to 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 (Something There). 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 the movie's title song (Beauty and the Beast). He then takes her to the balcony where he nervously manages to 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 is 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!" (The Mob Song) Belle and her father are locked in their cellar but are later released by an enchanted teacup named Chip who hid inside of Belle's bag. 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 on the castle's roof when Belle appears. The Beast, reenergized, turns 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 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. Beast moves towards Belle, who is not sure as to who the new man is, until she looks into his eyes and recognizes them as the same as the piercing blue ones of the Beast's. With the spell now broken, the gloomy castle becomes beautiful again and the enchanted objects of the castle turn back into people who closely resemble their object counterparts.
The next day, a celebration ball is held, and 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 (it was Lumiere). Maurice makes friends with Mrs. Potts, and with one last glance at the new stained-glass window, the film ends (Beauty and the Beast Reprise).
