My first experience with "Sleeping Beauty" was at the end of my 2nd grade year, the film's magic simply blew my mind, the bell rung shortly after the christening part and we never could finish the film. Coincidentally, the same year, I saw the climactic fight with the dragon in a Disney TV's special yet the second act remained a total mystery and I never thought I missed much since I was already familiar with the best bits, including the incomparable Tchaikovsky's waltz theme of the same name. But after a series of missed opportunities, I finally watched Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" all the way.
Still, it wasn't that new an experience, I remember being mesmerized by the TV versions of the classic fairy-tale, I saw two when I was 9, and the story had no secret for me, especially because the two films where relatively faithful to Perrault's original book (in one of them, Aurora was actually named 'Briar Rose' and I thought it was just an artistic license). Speaking of the story, I thought it was surprisingly dark, projecting our deepest fears like being struck by a malevolent curse such as the spindle of the wheel, and living in the constant fear that it would be complete, not to mention the creepy vision of a whole town put in a comatose state for a whole century, a device that a child could easily assimilate to death.
Although it deviates from the original material, "Sleeping Beauty" magnificently renders the sinister atmosphere of the story and one of its strongest aspects relies on the depiction of magic through the eternal opposites: good and evil. Disney's animated movies have always provided the best art-form when it came to vehicle these fantastic elements and as a result, the animation is absolutely dazzling whether it induces fear of amazement. The three fairies are magnificently characterized thanks to the wise choice of reducing their number to three and making them physically different, and Maleficent has this mix of elegance and darkness that perfectly suits her status as a Disney villain. In fact, for a Disney film, the film gets strangely explicit by always referring to the antagonism between good and evil through the devilish incarnation of Maleficent, who's more than your usual Witch.
And perhaps this is the main achievement of "Sleeping Beauty", to exploit familiar archetypes from previous Disney classics, without recycling them. Maleficent is a class on her own and is never comparable to the Evil Queen from "Snow White" and the three fairies are much more motherly and three-dimensional figures than the jolly Godmother from "Cinderella". "Sleeping Beauty" goes even further by eschewing one of the dullest archetypes from the other films: the nameless and bland Prince. This time, Philip, to name him, becomes the first truly heroic Prince of Disney, the one who really struggled to get to Aurora and bless her with a true love kiss. Released in 1959, after several years of preparation and pre-production, anyone could tell Disney wanted to make a new movie out of familiar material.
Now, there are two aspects in the film that certainly divide opinions. One being the small screen-presence of Aurora, which probably suffers from the fact that the Prince, the fairies, Maleficent and even the Kings are given more preeminent roles. For some viewers, Aurora is dull, passive or under-developed at best. The second is animation, the realism of the background, the magnificent way it renders some of the most beautiful medieval paintings, and make you look at the film as a new milestone in Disney's canon, some might find it too linear or geometrical, foreshadowing the evolution of Disney's animation to a more sketchy format, and regret the most rounded aspect of Disney's previous film, the one that Disney Renaissance would resurrect with "The Little Mermaid".
Characters and animation either support or cancel one another. I, for one, thought that the animation was perfect for the film, that "Sleeping Beauty" is a masterpiece on the animation level, even more impressive since the film was still hand-drawn and didn't rely on the Xerox process that would be used for "One Hundred and One Dalmatians". Known for being the first to be shot in Technirama process, the large scope of the film allowed the team to be more perfectionism in the depiction of backgrounds whether for castles or forests, multiplying by ten the delays of production. But for what a result! I can only envy those who saw the film in a large screen; no castle has even been more frightening than Maleficent's, conveying the Gothic atmosphere the story required. The same year than Ben-Hur, Disney proved to be capable of making blockbusters, technically speaking.
And the drawing plays an interesting role, by canceling the eventual blandness of Aurora. She not only is the best-looking of all Disney princesses but her facial features also suggest a strongest and most modern personality, like a younger version of Lauren Bacall. Given the role she's supposed to have in the original story, the main players being the fairies, Maleficent and the Prince, her lack of screen-presence doesn't damage her characterization at all, hell, even her smile when she's waken up isn't the same ecstatic enthusiasm than Snow White but rather looks like a clever 'here you are' wink. The four roles are fairly distributed and the best thing it did was to spare us from too much cute little animals as time-fillers.
If not as revolutionary as "Snow White" or as popular as "The Lion King", the film features three classic scenes, so-defining of what Disney stood for: the magic christening, the climactic good vs. bad battle, and naturally, the magnificent kiss. "Sleeping Beauty" uses all the archetypes of the fairy-tales and Disney previous successes and the result is a classic masterpiece of Animation, certainly the most defining of Disney, since even the castle where Aurora lies in the highest tower became Walt Disney's all-time trademark.
Still, it wasn't that new an experience, I remember being mesmerized by the TV versions of the classic fairy-tale, I saw two when I was 9, and the story had no secret for me, especially because the two films where relatively faithful to Perrault's original book (in one of them, Aurora was actually named 'Briar Rose' and I thought it was just an artistic license). Speaking of the story, I thought it was surprisingly dark, projecting our deepest fears like being struck by a malevolent curse such as the spindle of the wheel, and living in the constant fear that it would be complete, not to mention the creepy vision of a whole town put in a comatose state for a whole century, a device that a child could easily assimilate to death.
Although it deviates from the original material, "Sleeping Beauty" magnificently renders the sinister atmosphere of the story and one of its strongest aspects relies on the depiction of magic through the eternal opposites: good and evil. Disney's animated movies have always provided the best art-form when it came to vehicle these fantastic elements and as a result, the animation is absolutely dazzling whether it induces fear of amazement. The three fairies are magnificently characterized thanks to the wise choice of reducing their number to three and making them physically different, and Maleficent has this mix of elegance and darkness that perfectly suits her status as a Disney villain. In fact, for a Disney film, the film gets strangely explicit by always referring to the antagonism between good and evil through the devilish incarnation of Maleficent, who's more than your usual Witch.
And perhaps this is the main achievement of "Sleeping Beauty", to exploit familiar archetypes from previous Disney classics, without recycling them. Maleficent is a class on her own and is never comparable to the Evil Queen from "Snow White" and the three fairies are much more motherly and three-dimensional figures than the jolly Godmother from "Cinderella". "Sleeping Beauty" goes even further by eschewing one of the dullest archetypes from the other films: the nameless and bland Prince. This time, Philip, to name him, becomes the first truly heroic Prince of Disney, the one who really struggled to get to Aurora and bless her with a true love kiss. Released in 1959, after several years of preparation and pre-production, anyone could tell Disney wanted to make a new movie out of familiar material.
Now, there are two aspects in the film that certainly divide opinions. One being the small screen-presence of Aurora, which probably suffers from the fact that the Prince, the fairies, Maleficent and even the Kings are given more preeminent roles. For some viewers, Aurora is dull, passive or under-developed at best. The second is animation, the realism of the background, the magnificent way it renders some of the most beautiful medieval paintings, and make you look at the film as a new milestone in Disney's canon, some might find it too linear or geometrical, foreshadowing the evolution of Disney's animation to a more sketchy format, and regret the most rounded aspect of Disney's previous film, the one that Disney Renaissance would resurrect with "The Little Mermaid".
Characters and animation either support or cancel one another. I, for one, thought that the animation was perfect for the film, that "Sleeping Beauty" is a masterpiece on the animation level, even more impressive since the film was still hand-drawn and didn't rely on the Xerox process that would be used for "One Hundred and One Dalmatians". Known for being the first to be shot in Technirama process, the large scope of the film allowed the team to be more perfectionism in the depiction of backgrounds whether for castles or forests, multiplying by ten the delays of production. But for what a result! I can only envy those who saw the film in a large screen; no castle has even been more frightening than Maleficent's, conveying the Gothic atmosphere the story required. The same year than Ben-Hur, Disney proved to be capable of making blockbusters, technically speaking.
And the drawing plays an interesting role, by canceling the eventual blandness of Aurora. She not only is the best-looking of all Disney princesses but her facial features also suggest a strongest and most modern personality, like a younger version of Lauren Bacall. Given the role she's supposed to have in the original story, the main players being the fairies, Maleficent and the Prince, her lack of screen-presence doesn't damage her characterization at all, hell, even her smile when she's waken up isn't the same ecstatic enthusiasm than Snow White but rather looks like a clever 'here you are' wink. The four roles are fairly distributed and the best thing it did was to spare us from too much cute little animals as time-fillers.
If not as revolutionary as "Snow White" or as popular as "The Lion King", the film features three classic scenes, so-defining of what Disney stood for: the magic christening, the climactic good vs. bad battle, and naturally, the magnificent kiss. "Sleeping Beauty" uses all the archetypes of the fairy-tales and Disney previous successes and the result is a classic masterpiece of Animation, certainly the most defining of Disney, since even the castle where Aurora lies in the highest tower became Walt Disney's all-time trademark.