The first animated movie nominated for a ‘Best Picture’ Oscar
Even after years of development, it often feels like any animated movie faces an uphill battle come award season. Although the Oscars have given the medium its separate category during the ceremony, the animated model has always been unfairly considered the lesser format compared to live-action films, tending to cater more towards children. Then again, any great film can overcome any layers of pretension.
“Animation is cinema,” Guillermo del Toro famously said in his emotional acceptance speech after winning a Golden Globe for his recent rework of Pinocchio. “Animation is not a genre for kids. It’s a medium,” he added with great passion.
When animated films first started gaining traction, the world of Disney was among the first to receive the most prestigious honours. Although the ‘House of Mouse’ had already started to find its feet with their interpretation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it wasn’t until Pinocchio in 1940 that the Academy recognised an animated feature.
Then again, the story of a lonesome puppet who wants nothing else than to be a real boy wasn’t enough to reach the top of the food chain, only winning ‘Best Original Song’ and ‘Best Musical Score’. Whether animated or live-action, Disney has always been celebrated for their phenomenal track record with music, always pairing the perfect melody to accompany what’s going on onscreen.
Since the medium was still pretty green, Disney would have a long way to go before settling on a formula they knew worked. Outside of different experiments working with original concepts like The Aristocats and Oliver and Company, things didn’t start going supernova until the 1990s when the ‘Disney Renaissance’ began.
In just a few short years, Disney went from being a modest form of children’s entertainment to one of the fixtures of the film industry, notching up one classic after the next with the release of movies like Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and The Lion King. Sandwiched in between all of those was Beauty and the Beast, with a story too perfect for the Academy to pass up.
Following the tale of Belle as she slowly falls in love with the titular Beast, the Disney classic featured breathtaking animation and some of the greatest soundtrack songs of the era, from Angela Lansberry’s amazing take on the title track to Jerry Orbach piling on the charm as Lumiere for the song ‘Be Our Guest’.
While composer Alan Menken walked away with an Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’ for the title track and ‘Best Musical Score’, Beauty and The Beast became the first animated feature to be nominated for ‘Best Picture’, standing alongside staples of 1991 like JFK. Though the award may have gone to the thriller Silence of the Lambs, the stigma around animated features was smashed down instantly.
From there, animation started to have much more presence during award season, with Disney walking away with ‘Best Original Screenplay’ a few years later with their first Pixar film, Toy Story. While other animated films nominated for ‘Best Picture’ have been kept in Disney’s hands, like Up and Toy Story 3, animation has only gotten more ambitious, with recent films like Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse being stunning masterpieces of animated imagery.
More than anything, Disney’s willingness to put its heart and soul into a movie like Beauty and the Beast broke down barriers for what was assumed to be classic cinema at the time. While some might still complain that animation is meant for kids, it doesn’t matter as long as it moves something in the audience’s heart.
