In the famous song “C’est la Fête” from “Beauty and the Beast”, a small inconsistency crept into the words sung by Lumière, but the error was corrected 26 years later, in the version of 2017.
For several years, Disney studios have been revisiting their great animated classics to give them a new life in live action. It’s an opportunity for directors to transform famous characters into flesh-and-blood actors, but also – from time to time – to repair some small script errors (like for example in The Lion King from 2019, where the Rafiki’s tail has been modified).
But let’s focus here on another masterpiece of animation. Signed in 1991 by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, the first animated feature film to be nominated for an Oscar in the “best film” category, adapted into live-action 26 years later, it is of course Beauty and the Beast .
Considered by many fans as one of the most beautiful Disney ever made, this little gem of animation nevertheless contains a slight plot inconsistency, which slipped into the words intoned by Lumière, during the famous song It’s party.
“Ten years of real hardship, shriveled by dust, without ever being able to show our know-how”laments the candlestick, evoking the long period during which the Prince was transformed into a Beast, and the castle staff into elements of the furniture.
Knowing that the Prince is 21 years old when he meets Belle (as specified in the film), we can deduce from this little sentence that he was transformed at the age of 11. How is it, then, that Belle finds a portrait of him as an adult in his human form?
Walt Disney Animation Studios
Even if many fans have tried to theorize this anomaly, it is undoubtedly a script error… which the Disney studios therefore repaired 26 years later, in Bill Condon’s feature film carried by Emma Watson and Dan Stevens.
Indeed, in the original version of the 2017 film, Lumière no longer sings “Ten years we’ve been rusting” (“10 years we rusted”) but “Too long we’ve been rusting” (“For too long we have rusted”).
A simple little adjustment which allows us to remain much more vague as to the duration of the enchantment which struck the Prince and his staff, and therefore to erase the inconsistency that we have spoken about. This change, however – undoubtedly for a question of tempo in the lyrics of the song – was not carried over into the French version of the film, where Lumière always speaks of an entire decade.
(Re)discover our theory on the age of the Prince in “Beauty and the Beast”…