Scene Selection — Geoff Carter: ‘Beauty’ stands test of time

Friday, Oct. 25, 2002 | 9:20 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

Walt Disney Pictures' "Beauty and the Beast," now available on DVD (Disney DVD, $29.99), had its genius recognized almost immediately upon its release -- a comparative rarity for Disney's animated films.

Critics and audiences loved it; the film won awards and was nominated for Best Picture, against "The Silence of the Lambs." To my mind, it ranks as the strangest race in Oscar history.

So many of Disney's animated classics have had to wait their due -- "Fantasia" and "Sleeping Beauty" among them. It was good to see "Beauty" received so well, and better to realize, a decade after its original theatrical release, that we were right about the film from the beginning.

"Beauty" remains timeless, untouchable. By comparison, Hannibal Lecter's looking pretty shopworn these days.

The DVD of "Beauty" is one of the most comprehensive sets Disney has ever assembled. I was wowed by its archive-quality treatment of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and further impressed by all the extras that accompanied "Monsters, Inc.," but the "Beauty" DVD is practically in its own world.

Forget extras for the moment: The disc has three versions of the film.

The optimal version, a "special edition" released to Imax theaters earlier this year, has picture and sound to boggle the mind. Switch back and forth between the original video release and the disc and marvel, as I did.

Plus, the "special edition" restores a musical sequence by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, "Human Again."

It's a real showstopper, the film's second -- "Be Our Guest" remains one of the most joyous musical sequences on film -- but what distinguishes the sequence is that it doesn't stand out from the rest of the film, even though it was animated years after the picture was released. George Lucas could do worse than to follow the Disney example the next time he gets the urge to tinker with his old films.

More extraordinary than the "special edition" is the "work in progress" edition that played the New York Film Festival in October 1991. The move was unprecedented on several levels -- showing an animated film before it was completed to an audience traditionally hostile to Disney fare.

But the New York audiences loved it, and it's not hard to see why: In its rough form, "Beauty" has an eerie, gothic grandeur. Far from being a curio, the "work in progress" edition is a fascinating take on a classic film.

Naturally, "Beauty and the Beast" has an admirable complement of collateral materials as well. The second disc of the set is packed with interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, concept art, games for children and celebrity hosts, including part-time Las Vegan Celine Dion, who had one of her biggest hits with the film's love theme.

The real stars of the "Beauty" set are the film's creators, and rightly so. Disney only applies a light degree of whitewash to the story: Departed animation guru Jeffrey Katzenberg's contributions are only slightly diminished, and Ashman's long, painful death of AIDS is tastefully handled. I got a lump in my throat hearing Menken speak of his absent partner.

Animators Don Hahn, Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise and composer Menken do the commentary on "Beauty," and confess that they appropriated a number of live-action storytelling techniques to make the film.

They're being modest. What Disney's animators did with "Beauty" was to rewrite the rulebook, paving the way for films ranging from the farcical "Shrek" to the upcoming eye-popper "Treasure Planet."

And they did it with a measure of heart few could hope to match.