Featured Movie - Beauty and the Beast

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Beauty and the Beast is one of Disney’s finest films.
The movie explores humanity as a man, cursed by an enchantress must have a woman fall in love with him before an enchanted rose wilts.

The amount of experimentation, love, and effort that went into its production is incredible. For such an exceptional film, you might be surprised to find it was made in only two years instead of the conventional three or four years (or up to six, like in the case of Aladdin or Sleeping Beauty), and yet it made it all the way to the Academy Awards; it was nominated for six awards, including Best Picture (a feat an animated picture never reached before and didn’t happen again until Disney-PIXAR’s UP).



The music is one of the most enchanting features of this film.
During the ‘80s, Disney had all but forgone the musical format of their old movies and suffered considerably because of it.
Upon entering the ‘90s, however, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (song writer and lyricist) were going to change all that.
Without Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, this film would not have been the same.
Beauty and the Beast is presented in sort of an operetta format like theirThe Little Mermaid a few years before it.
Menken and Ashman were nervous when they first submitted their score; they were sure that the executives would laugh at it. But instead, they loved it.
Ashman, the lyricist, though extremely sick with AIDS during the making of the film, contributed so much more to the film than just the lyrics. He helped to flesh out characters, and refine the story. It was he who came up with the idea to have the servants be human. Originally, they were nothing more than mystical objects that would float around with no personality.

Ashman was proud of his work on The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, almost breaking into tears once; he knew that the music he’d created for these very special movies would live long past his time, and probably forever.
Ashman died before the duo’s third Disney movie, Aladdin was released. He did however, get to write three of the songs before passing.



Belle, the heroine, is different than most of the Disney princesses. Her eyes are smaller, her lips are dark and full, and her features are more European.



The Beast’s design went through many, many changes. At first, his design was little more than various animal heads attached to a humanoid body (heads of pigs, baboons, and even insects were tried). In the end, they were all rejected; the creators wanted something more powerful and unconventional. It was Chris Sanders (writer/director of Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon) who finally paved the way to the Beast’s final design; Sanders submitted a design that was pretty much like the final version. The Beast’s body consists of the hindquarters and tail of a wolf, the body of a bear, and the head of bison. Glen Keane (supervising animator of the Beast) visited several zoos and studied many animals to come up with a way that the Beast would move and behave.



The Beast’s character matures and changes in several ways (sometimes quite subtly). In the beginning, the Beast wears little more than his goodwill (tattered pants and a cape), he walks around on all fours, and snarls like a wild animal. The West Wing is a reflection of his humanity; it is torn to bits.
One of the more sad and subtle scenes in the movie is where Belle discovers the Beast’s living quarters. She goes there without his permission and explores the Beast’s inner-mind, so to speak.



There are two reasons why the Beast didn’t want Belle to explore his West Wing: because he feared she would destroy the Enchanted Rose, and also because he was ashamed of what he had become; he didn’t want her to see that part of himself – the Beast. He wanted her to see the human behind the monster.
After he meets Belle, the Beast begins to walk upright, wear more articles of clothing; he starts caring more about his appearance, and even attempts to eat in a civilized manner like he used to. If Belle had never come to his castle, the Beast would have completely devolved into nothing more than a monster.



In this way, Beauty and the Beast delivers a message as old as time; do not judge by appearances, and also:  you can change.



Beauty and the Beast tried out many new techniques for animated films. They utilized “jump-cuts”, and the “crane-camera”, things that up until then, had not really been used in animated features.
These camera techniques are inspired by watching live action movies. The “Crane Camera” is a swooping point-of-view camera which was used in the famous dancing scene. The Crane Camera is usually only used when a 3D background is created so that it’s easier to film the environment.
The “Jump-cut” is a technique used to move the story dramatically forward without having to tell what comes in-between. The scene where Belle finds Philippe (the horse) and then suddenly jumps to her arriving at the castle is an example of a jump-cut.



As the movie draws to a close, you cannot but fondly remember the remarkable transformation scene.
Belle has fallen in love with the Beast, as he has protected her from the village's evil villain, Gaston. As he lays dying from a mortal wound in the back, Belle whispers, "I Love You".

With those words, the spell is broken and the magic begins.



Glen Keane, the animator behind this amazing sequence studied the great masters such as Michelangelo to create an epic, almost life-like moment.



The character designers went through great pain deciding what the human version of the beast should look like. because they spent the whole movie teaching the audience to love the beast, it'd be hard to love a "stranger" that would appear after the transformation scene.
So, to get the idea across that this was the same man Belle had fallen in love with, the movie, for a brief moment focuses on his eyes. That's all you need to know that it's the same soul.



With that, Belle and the Beast live happily ever after.
Because the movie was on such a short time-schedule, some of you may have noticed that the dancing animation at the end was borrowed from Sleeping Beauty. Hehe.