Hiding in Plain Sight

Never got around to watching this gem until now...

Our kids loved the animated Disney musical (1991) but stills from the 1946 film by Jean Cocteau, The Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete) always struck me as pretty cheesy. Wrong, again! Apparently many of its clever visual touches were driven by budget limitations in war time France. We're all the better for it. It's great fun to see how much of it served as source material for what has also become a Disney classic. Definitely worth an hour and a half of your time.  I watched it on TCM, but Criterion offers it in several formats.