Welcome to “Friday Favorites” which highlight some of my favorite movie-related things.

I’ve seen Beauty and the Beast more times than I could possibly remember, and have listened to the soundtrack even more frequently.  It’s one of my favorite song scores for film, particularly as its structure and styling is very reminiscent of traditional Broadway musicals, filled with reprises and cast cues that feel very familiar to those on the stage.  (It also helps that the songs for the film were largely recorded live with the orchestra, helping it to feel more like a Broadway cast album rather than a studio recording.)  Perhaps that’s one of the reasons its stage version was so successful.  However, until just this week I had never picked up on one of the most clever aspects of the song score.

During the opening number, “Belle”, we’re introduced to the film’s protagonist, who is viewed by the villagers as too dreamy and bookish for their tastes despite her beauty.  The song is mostly sung by the villagers about Belle, rather than letting her sing about herself, as she goes to the bookstore to exchange the book she just finished for a new one.  Partway through the song, however, she gets an opportunity to express herself, singing to presumably the only one who will listen, a passing sheep.  She sings lovingly of the story contained within the pages, “Oh!  Isn’t this amazing?  It’s my favorite because you’ll see.  Here’s where she meets Prince Charming.  But she won’t discover that it’s him till chapter three.”  Take a look at the song below (the key moment starts at 2:15):

Later in the film, as Belle and the Beast begin to fall in love, there’s another song called “Something There”, sung by Belle, the Beast and the enchanted members of the household.  (Interestingly, this song was created at the last minute because the planned song, “Human Again”, was causing problems with the story.  “Human Again” was eventually reworked and added back in for the stage version, and the reworked version was animated and added back into the film as a special edition.)  Watch “Something There” below:

While the leitmotif sung by Belle in “Belle” has always been obvious to me, for some reason I never realized that the repetition in “Something There” (at 0:56 in the clip above) was an intentional call back to how she’s living out her own version of the story.  In the second song, she sings, “New and a bit alarming, who’d have ever thought that this could be?  True that he’s no Prince Charming, but there’s something in him that I simply didn’t see.”  Earlier she sang about a character in her book, who meets her Prince Charming, but doesn’t discover that it’s him until the third chapter.  Belle has now met her own Prince Charming in the Beast, but won’t fully realize that she loves him until the third act of the story.  And, fittingly, the leitmotif plays again after her confession of love, as the Beast transforms back into a prince.  Take a look (or at least a listen):

I love the concept of leitmotifs, musical sequences that represent a particular character, emotion or idea and are repeated throughout a story at appropriate moments.  But what lets musicals stand apart, is the connection of lyrics to the notes, which allows the characters to express themselves in song in a way that they wouldn’t be able to with simple dialogue.  Then, when the leitmotif is repeated, the music has a stronger connection to the characters and to the story.  Alan Menken is, of course, a master at scoring musicals, and this small cue stands out strongly in the middle of the songs in which it features.  Howard Ashman’s lyrics for the two sequences cleverly mirror each other, cluing the audience in to the connection, while Belle herself is still in the dark about living out her own story.  It’s interesting that the leitmotif does not appear in “Human Again”, meaning that the film as originally scored would have left out this key middle instance of the melody.

I often get asked how I can stand to watch the same films over and over again.  People ask, “When you know the story, what is there to hold your interest?”  Beyond the fact that that question is ridiculous because stories still have value even if we’ve heard them before, not to mention that I as the audience change a little from day to day and a story might mean something differently to me today than it did yesterday.  But more than that, it’s impossible to catch everything on a first, second, third or even hundredth viewing.  Some things just have to come to you.  None of this excuses my stupidity in not realizing this before, especially considering my years of musical experience and my obsession with film in general and Disney in particular, but it’s still fun to know that even something you’ve seen dozens of times can still surprise you after all these years.

What do you think?  Did you notice the connection between these three moments before?  (Probably you did, and it’s just that the Love Pirate is slow.)  Do you like that Beauty and the Beast feels more traditionally Broadway than many of its peers?  How do you feel about the deleted song “Human Again”?  Where does the songwriting duo of Menken and Ashman rank among the other musical greats like Gilbert and Sullivan or Rogers and Hammerstein?  Let me know in the comments!