Review of Die Schöne und das Biest

I wrote a review a few years ago about this TV film - asking Anglophone viewers not to be put off by the German, since they would be missing one of the most magical and moving versions of the tale. After seeing the bloated new version by Disney I had to go back to it as a kind of cleansing process. There are also some coincidences in the handling of the story that make me think the US team must have been inspired by this German version, some of the more poetic details – not in the latest and to the 1991 cartoon version – in the Disney seem based on ideas in Marc-Andreas Borchert's wonderful film. The main theme of transformation through love is enacted with utter credibility and convincing emotion, so there is great suspense that beast may not survive after all, making it a thriller as well as a dramatic love story. It plays in glorious Alpine scenery in castles both ruined and splendid, the music by Stephan Maria Schneider very moving, the actors ideal, a complex charismatic Beast and beautifully down-to-earth beauty, elements of humour; I cannot praise it enough and beg all to see it as an antidote to Hollywood megalomania (by which I do not mean the brilliant 1991 cartoon version!).