Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Director:

Clyde Geronimi

Writers:

Erdman Penner (story)
Charles Perrault (story)

Release Date:

6 February 1959 (Brazil)

Genre:

Animation | Family | Fantasy | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

Now the magic moment! Full-length feature fantasy - Beautiful beyond belief

Plot:

A snubbed malevolent fairy casts a curse on a princess that only a prince can break, with the help of three good fairies.

Plot Keywords:

Prince | Fairy | Princess | King | Birthday

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 2 nominations

Cast

Mary Costa	...	Princess Aurora (voice)
Bill Shirley	...	Prince Phillip (voice)
Eleanor Audley	...	Maleficent (voice)
Verna Felton	...	Flora (voice)
Barbara Luddy	...	Merryweather (voice)
Barbara Jo Allen	...	Fauna (voice)
Taylor Holmes	...	Stefan (voice)
Bill Thompson	...	Hubert (voice)

Also Known As:

La bella durmiente (Argentina) (Peru) (Spain) [es]
La belle au bois dormant (Belgium: French title) (France) [fr]
A Bela Adormecida (Brazil) [pt]
Csipkerózsika (Hungary) [hu]
Doornroosje (Belgium: Flemish title) [un]
Doornroosje (Netherlands) [nl]
Dornröschen (West Germany) [de]
Dornröschen und der Prinz (West Germany) [de]
La bella addormentata nel bosco (Italy) [it]
Nemureru mori no bijo (Japan) [ja]
Prinsessa Ruusunen (Finland) [fi]
Prinsessan Törnrosa (Finland: Swedish title) [sv]
Törnrosa (Sweden) [sv]
Tornerose (Denmark) [da]

Runtime:

75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo (original release) | 70 mm 6-Track (RCA Sound Recording) (70 mm prints) | Dolby Digital (DVD version) | Mono (35 mm prints) (RCA Sound Recording)

Certification:

West Germany:o.Al. | Iceland:L | Portugal:M/6 | South Korea:All | USA:G (re-rating) (1970) | Canada:G (video rating) | USA:Approved (certificate #19062) (original rating) | Finland:K-3 (2008) (DVD release) | Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Chile:TE | Finland:K-8 (1959) | Peru:PT | Spain:T | Sweden:7 (re-release) | Sweden:Btl | UK:U | Brazil:Livre

Company:

Walt Disney Productions

Trivia:

Shot on a 35mm Tecnirama double-frame negative (which is as big as two regular Academy frames joined together) running horizontally through the animation camera, with each frame photographed three times (once with a red filter, once with a blue filter, and once with a green filter). This negative was then printed on both CinemaScope-compatible anamorphic film and Super Technirama 70mm film.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Fauna was trying to make the cake herself, she read that she needed two eggs to go into the cake mix, and yet when she used her magic, three were put in.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Narrator: In a faraway land, long ago, there lived a King and his fair Queen. Many years they had longed for a child, and finally their wish was granted. A daughter was born, and they called her Aurora. Yes, they named her after the dawn, for she filled their lives with sunshine. Then a great holiday was proclaimed throughout the land, so that all of high or low estate could pay homage to the infant Princess. And our story begins on that most joyful day...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Saturday Night Live: Lindsay Lohan/Pearl Jam (#31.16)" (2006)

Soundtrack:

Sleeping Beauty

I have a theory about this movie...

...which is that it may have been designed more for an adult audience than a children's. At any rate it was way ahead of its time in 1959. "Sleeping Beauty" was one of the movies I watched as a child, and its grandness overwhelmed me even at the age of ten. I couldn't be happier to see it finally in the DVD format. But watch closely; you'll notice many subtle, sophisticated things which other viewers have touched on in earlier reviews. The animation is almost surreal-- so incredibly lifelike that it abandons its cute, 'Disneyesque' pretensions from previous fairy tales. There are no talking mice, dogs or cats anywhere to be seen. Here the animals are silent, as animals are supposed to be. (I love the sequence with the forest animals as they are awakened by the singing of the barefoot princess and join up with her, like multiple chaperons, in harmonious whistles.) Even the fairy godmothers- who may initially appear as sugary stereotypes- spend so much time bickering (well, two of them do anyway) that you get to identify them as thoroughly fleshed out personalities. The adaptation of the original Perrault fairy tale is also impressive. An ingenious move was to have the prince and princess meet in the forest *first* and fall in love- unaware that they are already engaged to be married. Someone mentioned the chilling sequence which shows the princess, cloaked in an eerie green pallor, actually being lured to the fateful spinning wheel. So dark, so frightening- when was the last time you saw something like this in a Disney fairy tale? And then immediately afterwords is a cleansing sequence of unmatched beauty showing the fairies sailing through the sky like fireflies, magically dusting the rest of the castle to sleep. It is, of course, only matched by the film's finale which shows storm clouds, lightning, a forest of thorns, and a flame-spewing dragon-- all seamlessly bringing the story to a 75-minute conclusion. It stands, in my opinion, as Disney's masterpiece.