Maurice's Machine is an invention from Disney's 1991 animated film, Beauty and the Beast.
Description[]
It is a wooden machine containing various types of gadgetry, including an axe.
Usage[]
This machine is used to chop wood, supposedly making it easier than chopping with an ordinary axe.
Appearances[]
Beauty and the Beast[]
It first appeared after it made an explosion with brown smoke in the cellar large and loud enough to be witnessed from the entrance of the village (which had ironically occurred when Belle told off Gaston and LeFou and protesting that Maurice was a genius and not crazy) with enough force that Maurice was thrown into a barrel and for the smoke to burst out of the cellar from the explosion. Eventually, after being roused by Belle to complete it, citing her confidence in her father, he managed to fix the device and have it work perfectly. That machine is sound by a violin as loud as we can. Although it was intended to go to the fair as one of the entries, it never arrived due to Maurice getting lost in the woods, which resulted in him being forced to seek shelter at a mysterious castle in a forest, and his imprisonment by the castle's owner, as well as Philippe, fleeing back to Belle's cottage. Even though the device was presumably broken down for ease of carrying via wagon, it was somehow reconstructed by the time Belle and Maurice returned home.
It ends up being incredibly useful when Maurice and Belle are trapped in the basement by Gaston and his fellow townsmen when Chip rides it with a squeaky violin louder to break down the door of the basement. However, though the rescue is successful, the engine powering the machine is overwhelmed by the effort and explodes, sending a cloud of smoke up from the basement and breaking the machine, as it did during Maurice's early trial runs of getting it to work, as witnessed by Belle, LeFou, and Gaston at the beginning of the film.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- In the Marvel Comics story arc Dove Tales as well as the story "Bothered" in the first issue and the main story of the second issue of Disney Comics' New Adventures of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, it was revealed in a flashback and in the stories, respectively, that this machine was not the first attempt by Maurice for winning a fair, as Maurice had earlier created an egg collector, and after a slight disaster regarding the eggs being broken, he managed, with Belle's encouragement to successfully complete it, although they narrowly avoided missing the fair due to the Bimbettes' machinations; an automated truffle locator (a machine designed to find and dig up truffles) that had an unofficial test run saving Belle from a cellar and a bear (the latter being strongly implied to be a disguise for the Enchantress that cursed the Prince into a Beast); and a washer that wouldn't require the use of hands, respectively. Oddly, despite Maurice and Belle actually winning the fair with the Egg Collector and Maurice acting as though winning it would guarantee a better life and moving from the village, Belle and Maurice still stayed at the village. The status of the truffle locator is left ambiguous, outside of Maurice commenting that, finding Belle instead of a Truffle aside, it worked exactly as intended. The handless washer, however, was not even allowed to win first prize due to a mishap that resulted in one of the Judges' wives dresses being torn, which according to Maurice only had one in ten chances of happening.
