Sleeping Beauty (Blu-ray)

Connect to Facebook/Twitter, recommend via email and much more.

---

Note: In the following joint Blu-ray review, Jim and John provide their views on both the film and the Extras, with John also writing up the Video, Audio, and Parting Thoughts.

The Film According to Jim:
I saw "Sleeping Beauty" in the theaters when it first came out in 1959, and I'll confess that this nine year old had a cherished Princess Aurora jelly glass that he drank out of. If a kid did that today, he'd be the subject of ridicule. That's because Disney has aimed its Princess marketing so hard at young girls that any boy now who sees a princess in a movie automatically rolls his eyes and launches into ridicule mode.

I think that's an unfortunate by-product of the marketing campaign, because a film like "Sleeping Beauty" should just appeal to girls. There's a prince, too, and great pageantry and color in this cartoon version of the medieval films that were popular at the time--films like "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1949), "Ivanhoe" (1952), and "Knights of the Round Table" (1953). Plus, at the time it offered the most frightening Disney villain ever seen in Maleficent (voiced by Eleanor Audley, who also gave voice to the stepmother in "Cinderella"). And the dragon scene? It was an achievement in animated special effects. It was exciting, pure and simple.

"Sleeping Beauty" was Disney's return to fairy tales, and an enormous undertaking. At the time, it was the most expensive animated film ever produced, advertised as taking "six years and six million dollars to make." But we learn in bonus features that work on the film actually began as early as 1951, the year after "Cinderella" dazzled filmgoers, and Disney's hand is ever-present. "Of all the stirring legends of the triumph of good over evil, none has ever been so inspirational to me as Sleeping Beauty," Disney said. And it's true. "Sleeping Beauty" has the power that comes from simple allegory, and Disney's insistence that they strive for a completely new look resulted in a production dominated by artist Eyvind Earle's elongated one-dimensional pre-Renaissance style, which marked the first time that highly detailed backgrounds were used in an animated feature. "Sleeping Beauty" was also the last of the Disney films to use hand-inked cells, and the last film that Disney personally supervised. Which is to say, "Sleeping Beauty" was both the last great film from the classic era of Disney animation, and a hint of even greater things to come.

Set in the 14th century and adapted from Charles Perrault's version of the tale (Perrault also wrote the ballet that Tchaikovsky scored), "Sleeping Beauty" is probably closer in structure to the version related by the Brothers Grimm, who inspired Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937). It tells the story of a king and queen whose baby is cursed by a malevolent witch with the promise that before the child's 16th birthday she'll prick her finger on a spinning wheel . . . and die! And so three good fairies--Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather (Verna Felton, Barbara Jo Allen, and Barbara Luddy)--vow to put away their wands and secretly raise the child in the forest until the chance of her being killed has passed. On the day before the fairies are to bring her back to the castle for a grand celebration of her birthday, Aurora (Mary Costa) meets a man in the forest and falls in love. But things fall apart after the fairies bring Aurora back to the castle. Here too is where Disney really departs from the legend, compressing 100 years of sleep into a next-day battle that rages when Prince Phillip (Bill Shirley) tries to rescue her while the rest of the castle-including the fathers of the betrothed, King Stefan (Taylor Holmes) and King Hubert (Bill Thompson) sleep, "victims" of a spell cast by the fairies, who also arm the prince with a magical sword and shield.

And the prince needs it. Maleficent is a sorceress with spiral-horned headgear and flowing black gown who can vanish into thin air, transform herself into fire or a fire-breathing dragon, and send minions scurrying with jolts of lightning from her staff. She both frightened and captivated children when the film first showed, and she's likely to do the same for another generation. As you watch this film, you see plenty of times when Maleficent's henchmen and castle will remind you of "The Wizard of Oz," and Earle's striking backgrounds stand out in just about every scene. In fact, for adults, the breathtaking artwork is the real star. Almost every frame offers realistic-looking backgrounds from medieval times, the most striking of which are a pair of chalices that are the main props in a scene where the fairies reduce themselves and forge their secret plan.

There's less humor in Sleeping Beauty than today's youngsters have grown accustomed to, but the three good fairies provide some comic relief, with the rotund Merryweather and the bossy Flora dueling over their favorite colors, pink and blue. But director Clyde Geronimi ("Cinderella," "Alice in Wonderland," "Peter Pan," "Lady and the Tramp") does his usual excellent job of letting characters tell the story so that the charm of their personalities provides as much warmth as any humorous interlude.

What stands out, though, 50 years later, is that "Sleeping Beauty" is like the tapestries and medieval art that inspired it: an artistic triumph. Just about every scene is worthy of hanging on a wall, and that's a credit to Walt Disney as much as it is to artist Eyvind Earle.

For most of my adult life I've always gotten "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella" mixed up. I saw them in my youth when they first came out, "Cinderella" in 1950 and "Sleeping Beauty" in 1959, but then they began to merge in memory, not helped by the fact that both of them seemed to borrow a good deal from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." In any case, now that "Sleeping Beauty" is here in a beautifully restored new digital transfer, it's good to have, even if it doesn't measure up in my mind to some of the Disney studio's better animated work before and since.

The movie has several things going for it that are probably more important than its plot or characters. To start, it was the last film personally supervised by Uncle Walt himself. Next, it was the costliest animated feature Disney had produced up until that time. Third, its artwork is based on illustrations from medieval literature. Fourth, it features the music of Peter Tchaikovsky. And fifth, like most of Disney's animated classics, women play the leading roles, both as the heroines and as the villainess. This nod to feminism and women's rights long before it became fashionable in Hollywood is no small matter.

Disney's version of the fable is loosely adapted from the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty on the Woods," collected by Charles Perrault and published in his "Tales of Mother Goose" (1697). However, it's sometimes hard to tell that there was another story under all of Disney's cutesy trappings and climactic good-vs-evil confrontation. Even the three good fairies are made to look and act more affected than Perrault describes them. But it's Disney, so understand the license taken.

The tale begins with the birth of the Princess Aurora. Three good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, and one very bad lady, Maleficent, provide the baby with gifts. Maleficent's gift is a curse on the child; she tells everyone the Princess will prick her finger on a spinning wheel before her sixteenth birthday and die! Fortunately, the third good fairy hadn't provided her gift yet and casts a counter spell that says if the Princess does prick her finger, she will only sleep, not die, until awakened by love's first kiss.

To protect her from malicious spinning wheels, the fairies take Aurora into the woods to a secret place, where they raise her themselves until her sixteen years of danger have passed. Needless to say, sixteen years later while in the woods Aurora meets a handsome prince, Phillip by name, who falls in love with her, thinking her a mere commoner. But before anything more can come of the romance, the evil Maleficent finds the girl, tricks her into pricking her finger, and she falls into a fast sleep. The Prince must find her, battle Maleficent (as a dragon) to get to her, and then awaken her with a kiss. I kept picturing Shrek, so the whole business lost some of its charm.

Jim's film rating: 8/10

The Film According to John:
I hate to admit this, given the stature of "Sleeping Beauty" as a Disney classic, but after all these years I still don't care that much for the movie. Call me a curmudgeon and hang me from the nearest castle turret. I'll concede that the movie looks gorgeous in its new Blu-ray transfer, yet there remains much about it I simply don't like. Good thing you've already gotten a more balanced and reasoned viewpoint from Jim.

First of all, there's the art work, which most viewers admire and which Jim has already pointed out is worthy enough for some people to hang on their wall. However, even though it represents to a certain degree the one-dimensional illuminations and drawings of the late Middle Ages (Disney himself called them "moving illustrations"), I find the art looking too consciously flat, too blocky, and too simplistic for it to make much of an impression on me. In fact, it looks too much like the rest of the cartoon vogue of the fifties in its modern, stylized vertical and horizontal lines. While there are some fine background paintings, true, which in their exquisite detail remind one of vintage Disney, much of the artwork in "Sleeping Beauty" seems plain and direct to a fault. Except for a couple of surrealistic forest scenes and, of course, the radiant colors, there's not a lot more that's terribly magical about it. Anyway, maybe that just says something about my limited aesthetic sense.