French postcard by La Presse de Belville, Paris, no. 281, 1984. Image: Walt Disney Productions, 1964. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959). Caption: Aurora dances with the old owl. The French film title is La Belle au bois dormant.
American postcard by Animated Animation in the Awaken the Romance series. Image: Walt Disney Productions. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959). Caption: Dream Duet.
Vintage postcard in the Disney Classics series by European Greetings, no. 535552. Image: Disney. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959).
The princess will die when she pricks herself
In an unnamed kingdom in the 14th century, King Stefan and his wife Queen Leah have ruled for many years, but they still have no heir to the throne. The joy in the land is therefore very great when their daughter Aurora is born. A grand celebration is held. Also present at this celebration is Hugo, the king of the neighbouring country. His son, Philip, is betrothed to Aurora so that their two kingdoms will one day become one great empire.
Aurora is also visited by the three good fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, who each want to give her a special gift. Aurora thus receives two special gifts: first, that of beauty, and second, the ability to sing beautifully. Then, unexpectedly, the evil fairy Maleficent, who lives in the forbidden mountains, enters. Angry because she was not invited to the party, she casts a curse on Aurora: on her sixteenth birthday, the princess will die when she pricks herself on the spindle of a spinning wheel.
This curse cannot be lifted by anyone else. However, the blue fairy, who had not yet bestowed her gift on Aurora, does what she can and uses her magic to soften the curse: instead of dying, Aurora will fall into a deep sleep from which a true love's kiss can awaken her.
King Stefan has all the spinning wheels in the country burned as a precaution, but the fairies fear that this will not be enough to stop the curse. They come up with a plan to hide Aurora in a cottage in the forest and keep her there until her sixteenth birthday. To ensure that Maleficent does not find out, they give up their magic and live as ordinary people for all those years.
The plan seems to succeed because Maleficent does not find Aurora until the day of her sixteenth birthday. There was also a downside: King Stefan reported Aurora missing. The fairies give Aurora the alias Sleeping Beauty. On the very day the fairies are finally going to reveal who she really is, Aurora meets Prince Philip. Neither of them knows who the other really is, but they fall in love instantly. That evening, the fairies reveal the truth to Aurora.
Belgian postcard by Editions Corna, Brussels, no. 6/3308. Image: Walt Disney Productions. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959).
Belgian postcard by Editions Corna, Brussels, no. 6/3308. Image: Walt Disney Productions. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959).
French postcard by Edition Cres, Paris, no. 282. Image: Walt Disney Productions, 1964. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959). Caption: A happy ending. The French film title is La Belle au bois dormant.
The masterpiece of the Disney Studios' postwar style
Walt Disney first considered making an animated version of Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale 'Sleeping Beauty' in 1938. Joe Grant submitted preliminary artwork, but the project did not move forward. Disney registered Sleeping Beauty as a planned production title with the Motion Picture Association of America in 1950, after a preview audience's positive response to Cinderella (Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, 1950). Work on the film began as early as 1951. Disney envisioned Sleeping Beauty as the pinnacle of his studio's achievements in animation and was willing to pool all resources needed to achieve that.
The first voices were recorded in 1952. The animation was done between 1953 and 1958, and the music was composed in 1957. It is the last full-length Disney animated film to be made using hand-coloured cells. From the next feature film, 101 Dalmatians (1961), xerography would be used for this purpose. Disney had already made two animated films based on classic fairy tales, Snow White (1937) and Cinderella (1950), and he wanted this film to be visually distinct from the previous two. The backgrounds were given more detailed and complex artwork than in previous films. Disney's regular production designer, Ken Anderson, was in charge of the project. Eyvind Earle was allowed to design the sets for the film and was given a lot of freedom by Disney. Painting the detailed backgrounds in the film often took more than a week.
Before the drawing began, each scene from the film was acted out by actors to give the artists a good starting point for how the characters should move. Ed Kemmer acted out the scenes for the role of Prince Phillip. Helene Stanley was the live-action reference for Princess Aurora. For the script of this film, Disney based itself broadly on both the version of the original fairy tale as recorded in the 17th century by Charles Perrault and the later version by the Brothers Grimm, with some far-reaching changes. For example, Aurora's magical sleep in the film lasts only about one day, whereas in the original fairy tale, she sleeps for 100 years. Also, in the original fairy tale, most of the main and secondary characters have no names, unlike the characters in the film. Originally, there were to be seven good fairies in the film, as in the fairy tale. This was later reduced to three. Walt Disney initially wanted the three fairies to look very similar, but animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston opposed this plan because they believed it would not be interesting for the audience.
Some scenes from the film, such as Phillip being captured and later escaping from Maleficent's castle, were originally conceived for Disney's very first animated feature film, Snow White. In the original script, the prince was to be captured by Snow White's evil stepmother. The final scene, in which Aurora and Phillip are seen dancing together in the clouds, was originally planned for Snow White and later for Cinderella, but did not end up in either of these two earlier films. The name of the protagonist, Aurora, comes from Pyotr Tchaikovsky's 1889 ballet 'The Sleeping Beauty'. Her alias, Sleeping Beauty, is the name by which the fairy tale and its protagonist are better known today. Sleeping Beauty's castle is based on Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. The castle from the film has since become an icon. It has been replicated in three Disney parks: Disneyland (in California), Hong Kong Disneyland and Disneyland Paris.
With a production budget of $6 million, Sleeping Beauty was the most expensive Disney film at the time, and was over twice as expensive as each of the preceding three Disney animated features: Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), and Lady and the Tramp (1955). The film received mixed reviews from critics. They found the story too slow and the character development not strong enough. During its original release, the film grossed approximately $5.3 million (the distributor's share of the box office gross) in the United States and Canada. It was considered a box-office bomb, and Buena Vista Distribution (Disney's distribution division) lost $900,000. The film was re-released in 1970, 1986, 1993, 1995 and in limited release in 2008. Total revenue amounted to $478.22 million. When the film was re-released in 1979, Roger Ebert praised the animation, describing the film as a "lively and playful retelling of a favourite fairy tale." In 1985, Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader described Sleeping Beauty as "the masterpiece of the Disney Studios' postwar style"; he praised its use of the Super Technirama 70 process, particularly in the final battle scene. In 2014, the film Maleficent (Robert Stromberg, 2014) with Angelina Jolie in the lead role and Elle Fanning as Aurora was released in cinemas. It tells the fairy tale from the perspective of Maleficent.
French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3669. Photo: Pathé Frères. Scene from La belle au bois dormant / The Sleeping Beauty (Lucien Nonguet, Ferdinand Zecca, 1902). Caption: Que c'est joli, une quenouille! (How nice, a spinning wheel!).
French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3669. Photo: Pathé Frères. Scene from La belle au bois dormant / The Sleeping Beauty (Lucien Nonguet, Ferdinand Zecca, 1902). Caption: Le sommeil durera cent ans (The sleep will last for a hundred years).
Italian postcard by GT, no. 6/33084. Image: Walt Disney Productions. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959). Sent by mail in France in 1978.
Belgian postcard by Editions Corna, Brussels, no. 00157. Image: Walt Disney Productions. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959).
Dutch postcard by Interstat, Amsterdam, in the Disney Princess series. Image: Disney. Scene from Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959). Caption: Dream Duet.
Source: Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.
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