Beauty and the Beast: from a cautionary tale for girls to a $160 million movie

How the story of a girl who fell in love with an enchanted prince in the guise of a monster has changed over the centuries.

Origins of the tale

It is difficult to determine exactly when the plot of “Beauty and the Beast” took shape, but researchers of fairy-tale archetypes find its elements as early as Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” (1st century AD) or in “Cupid and Psyche” by Apuleius (2nd century AD) . However, as far as traditional versions of the tale are concerned, the oldest known version is considered to be the version of the French writer Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbeau de Villeneuve, who lived in the 18th century.

Another famous Frenchwoman, teacher and writer Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, shortened the fairy tale of her compatriot, eliminating from it the stories of the royal origin of both main characters and a detailed description of the miracles in the monster’s castle. With her, Belle turned into a merchant's daughter, and it is this version of the story that is usually published in the appendix to the fairy tales of Charles Perrault.

Leprince de Beaumont was a teacher at a girls' school and even developed her own pedagogical system. Her fairy tales had a clear moral - “Beauty and the Beast” is no exception in this regard, as it gives girls a moral lesson and explains why a person’s kind heart is much more important than his appearance.

This idea in the French fairy tale was embodied not only in the story of the monster. In the story, Belle has two sisters - they are as beautiful as herself, but cruel and envious. It was the sisters who almost caused the death of the monster: they deceived the beauty into staying as a guest at her father’s house in the hope that the beast would get angry and tear Belle apart when she returned to him. At the end of the tale, the villainesses become statues at the door of the castle of her sister and her husband. This is not just a punishment, it is an educational moment: the fairy who bewitched both of them specifies that they will remain stone until they realize their guilt and become kinder. True, he notes that such a day is unlikely to ever come.

"You get up, wake up, my dear friend"

The story of “Beauty and the Beast” was brought into untranslated Russian literature by the writer and public figure Sergei Aksakov. His “The Scarlet Flower (the tale of the housekeeper Pelageya)” was published in the second half of the 19th century as an appendix to the autobiographical book “The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson.”

The fairy tale, which Aksakov did not consider necessary to publish separately, later became his most published work.

The Russian version of the plot is overgrown with folklore phrases inherent in folk tales. It is interesting that in this version of the fairy tale the heroine is not the first girl to find herself in an enchanted palace.

The evil sorceress was angry with my late parent, the glorious and mighty king, stole me, still a small child, and with her satanic witchcraft, with unclean power, turned me into a terrible monster and cast such a spell so that I could live in such an ugly, disgusting and terrible form for everyone man, for every creature of God, until there is a red maiden, no matter what her family and rank, who loves me in the form of a monster and wishes to be my lawful wife - and then the witchcraft will all end, and I will again become a young man as before and look pretty.

And I lived as such a monster and a scarecrow for exactly thirty years, and I brought eleven red maidens into my enchanted palace, and you were the twelfth.

“The Scarlet Flower (the tale of the housekeeper Pelageya)”, Sergei Aksakov

The screen versions of The Scarlet Flower are probably no less familiar to Russian audiences than the book version. This is especially true for the animated version released in 1952 by Soyuzmultfilm.

His heroine Nastenka is reminiscent of Disney's Snow White (1937) - animals also love her, and birds also sing along to her songs.

“The Scarlet Flower” was adapted several times for the silver screen. In one of these films, the monster was played by 24-year-old Alexander Abdulov.

"I like being scared with you"

Just five years earlier than the famous Soviet cartoon, Beauty and Her Beast was released at the Cannes Film Festival. Jean Cocteau, an artist, playwright and one of the major figures in 20th-century French culture, directed his own version of the tale. The role of the enchanted prince was played by Cocteau's life partner, actor Jean Marais, better known to Russian audiences from the film trilogy about Fantômas.

Cocteau brought erotic symbols, the spirit of surrealism and his favorite motif of mirrors and reflections to the old fairy tale. Mare also played the role of Avenan, a friend of Belle’s brother, who fell in love with her and was rejected by her. At the end of the film, the envious sisters convinced Avenan to rob the monster, he committed a crime and died, turning into a beast, and the beast, thanks to the girl’s loving gaze, turned into a prince with Avenan’s face.

“Are you disappointed that I look like your brother’s friend?”

- Yes. No.

“The first time I hugged you, I was a monster.” You are happy?

- You'll have to get used to it. Where will you take me?

- To my kingdom. There you will be queen and reunite with your father, and your sisters will carry the train of your dress. Are not you afraid?

- I like being afraid with you.

dialogue between the beast and the beauty from the film by Jean Cocteau

This ending left plenty of room for imagination. According to one of the popular interpretations, the monster and Avenan are in fact two incarnations of one person, and the girl begins to see the humanity in him only after she overcomes her fear of the stranger.

The French made another full-length film based on de Villeneuve’s fairy tale in 2014. By this time, the fairy-tale classic had acquired a large number of interpretations, from the first American version in 1962 to the fantastic melodrama “Terribly Beautiful” in 2011, where the plot was transferred to a modern high school.

Director Christophe Gans, who was working on a new European interpretation, did not hide the fact that one of the main references for his film was Cocteau’s painting, and, like his famous predecessor, he tried to saturate it with non-obvious erotic symbols.

If you look closely, the film is full of images that vaguely resemble genitals - male or female. In fact, I wanted to achieve this effect, so that there would be something that would affect the subcortex of an adult viewer, but at the same time a child could calmly be next to this adult and not understand anything.

It was interesting. This is the idea of ​​the fairy tale, that you can appeal to any viewer - regardless of their age. This is not easy to achieve, but I tried.

Christophe Gans, director

Viewers praised the visuals of the film, in which the title roles were played by Léa Seydoux and Vincent Cassel, but criticized that against the backdrop of luxurious shots, “both the Gothic beauty of the story and the actors are frankly lost.”

"A tale as old as time itself"

The animated film "Beauty and the Beast" from Walt Disney Pictures became one of the studio's biggest successes and one of its longest-running projects. The idea for the film appeared back in the 30s, later it was repeatedly returned to, but it took almost 50 years for the technical capabilities to become possible to realize the idea.

Disney's Belle differs from her fairy-tale predecessors both in variations on the theme of "Beauty and the Beast" and in other films of the studio. She is no longer just a beautiful owner of a kind heart, like Snow White, Cinderella or Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, but also a bit of an eccentric and a fearless dreamer.

The animated film was also the first to show the development of the characters' relationships. The monster not only acts as a generous patron, as in Cocteau or Aksakov, he spends time with Belle, makes her laugh, acts as a protector, as a friend and as a romantic dance partner, and in the end he himself is greatly changed under her influence.

Beauty and the Beast was released in 1991 and became the first animated film in history to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture. Three songs from the cartoon were competing for the statuette (“Beauty and the Beast,” “Be Our Guest,” and “Belle”), and the title song won the Academy Award. The film won another Oscar for Best Original Score.

"You are our guest"

The history of the film adaptation, whose premiere in Russia is scheduled for March 16, began in 2009 - then it became known that the extremely popular Broadway musical, based on the Disney cartoon, was being adapted for the big screen.

Later, the project was suspended and underwent a number of changes, as a result of which it was decided to abandon the initial idea. As a result, the film turned from a film adaptation of a Broadway show into a film remake of the original cartoon.

Comparing both Disney films, DTF noted only a few minor differences. For example, the updated Belle no longer reads fairy tales, but novels about love.

Immediately on the eve of the Russian premiere, a scandal erupted: private photographs of Emma Watson, who played Belle, appeared online. The actress's representative quickly confirmed the authenticity of only those shots where she was captured in a swimsuit, but photographs of more explicit content, also attributed to Watson, continued to spread across the Internet.

This is not the first controversial situation that has arisen around the film. Back in early March , it became known that there was a character of non-traditional sexual orientation in the film, and this news was received ambiguously by potential viewers. The owners of the Henagar Drive-In movie theater in Alabama refused to show “Beauty and the Beast,” saying they would not show a movie that “Jesus could not safely attend.”

any signs of gay propaganda in it The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation assigned the film an age rating of 16+, but did not find .