Barnes & Noble - Donald Liebenson
Movies like this come along "once upon a dream." Released in 1959, the wildly ambitious and stylistically bold Sleeping Beauty -- at the time the most expensive animated feature ever -- mimicked Walt Disney's similarly grand Fantasia at the box office. That is, it failed. Nevertheless, both films are now considered among Disney's masterworks. This is old-school Disney, with enchanting princess Aurora; spell-breaking Prince Philip; evil villainess Malificent; scene-stealing good fairies Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather; and cute forest creatures to befriend our heroine. Sleeping Beauty makes a royal debut on DVD in a wide-screen presentation that does full justice to the majestic panoramas. The Tchaikovsky-inspired score contains the Disney standard "Once Upon a Dream," as well as the rollicking drinking song "Skumps." The climactic fight between Prince Philip and Maleficent, who transforms herself into a terrible dragon, is the stuff nightmares are made of, and it remains spectacular. It would be another 30 years until the Disney studios reentered the fairy tale realm with The Little Mermaid.
Sleeping Beauty
Director: Les Clark, Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman
Cast: Mary Costa
, Bill Shirley
, Eleanor Audley
, Verna Felton
, Barbara Luddy
, Bill Thompson
, Taylor Holmes
, Barbara Jo Allen
, Candy Candido
, Pinto Colvig
, Dal McKennon
, Marvin Miller
, Hal Ambro
, Milt Banta
, Roy M. Brewer Jr.
, George Bruns
, Bob Carlson
, Eric Cleworth
, Frank Cleworth
, Marc Davis
, Walt Disney
, Blaine Gibson
, Donald Da Gradi
, Donald Halliday
, Winston Hibler
, Ralph Hulett
, Ken Hultgren
, Ken Anderson
, John Kennedy
, Hal King
, Fred Kopietz
, Don Lusk
, George Nicholas
, Ken O'Brien
, Bill Peet
, Erdman Penner
, Joe Rinaldi
, Ted Sears
, John Sibley
, Henry Tanous
, Harvey Toombs
, Ralph Wright
, Bob Youngquist
Blu-ray
$26.99
- Release Date: 09/24/2019
- UPC: 0786936865363
- Original Release: 1959
- Rating: G
- Source: Walt Disney Video
26.99
Out Of Stock
In the original story, Princess Aurora sleeps for 100 years before being awakened by a prince's kiss. In the Disney version, Prince Philip comes to her rescue much sooner. George Brun's orchestral score, which was nominated for an Academy Award®, expertly blended famous themes from Tchaikovsky's ballet. With a budget that exceeded $6 million in 1959, this was Walt Disney's most lavish and expensive animated feature to date. Determined to make the characters as realistic as possible, Disney had a live action film shot with actors posing as Sleeping Beauty, the Prince, and Maleficent, for the animators to use. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called the fight between Prince Philip and Maleficent "the noisiest and scariest go-round he [Disney] has ever put into one of his films."
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All Movie Guide
The lavish, expensive Sleeping Beauty was something of a throwback for the Walt Disney Company, which had been churning out popular, if slight, live-action films throughout the 1950s. The musical's painstakingly rich animation and the timeless fairy-tale material place it in the same league as other, earlier beloved Disney titles such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), Pinocchio (1940), or Cinderella (1950). The animation is the most notable aspect of the film: it combines the lush colors of a 1930s Disney film with a distorted, almost expressionistic look. The overall effect is interesting and impressive, if somewhat mannered. The original widescreen format and George Bruns' elegant, Oscar-nominated score -- based on Tchaikovsky's original Sleeping Beauty Ballet -- also contribute to the film's sensuousness.