This is a movie I’ve
been looking forward to since we started this project. For this
week’s showing, we’ve got Sleeping Beauty.
Right off the bat, I can say that this was and remains one of my
favorite Disney movies. One of my favorite animated movies. Its
just a fantastic production, everything is handled well in the movie.
In a way, it seems that all of Disney’s work was building up to
this and this is the final peak of the art form.
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| Original Poster Sourced via IMDB |
Summary:
This is another one I expect everyone to have some knowledge of. This
movie is an adaptation of the Sleeping
Beauty
fairy tale, specifically the Charles Perrault version. We
open to the christening of our main character, the “sleeping
beauty,” Princess Aurora. During this scene she is betrothed to
Prince Phillip and is blessed by the three fairies, Flora, Fauna and
Merryweather. Maleficent, an evil fairy, appears and, upset that she
wasn’t invited, curses Aurora. Originally, it was to prick her
finger on a spinning wheel and die at age 16, but Merryweather uses
her blessing to weaken the curse, making it that she’ll only fall
into a deep sleep. Trying to escape this fate, the fairies keep
Aurora in hiding in the woods until her 16th
birthday. We jump to her 16th
birthday and eventually, Aurora is told that she’s a princess and
they bring her back to the castle to be married to Prince Phillip.
While
at the castle, she ends up pricking her finger on the spinning wheel
and is put into a deep sleep. Prince Phillip is captured by
Maleficent. With the help of the good fairies, he escapes captivity
and goes to save Aurora. Maleficent turns into a dragon to stop
Phillip, but he overcomes and slays the dragon, frees Aurora, they
marry and everyone lives happily ever after.
The
first thing about this movie that stands out is the art direction. I
actually feel that’s what makes this movie so special. This movie
is just gorgeous. While I may like another animated film better and
might argue that others look better animated, I feel that this movie
is the best that I’ve seen, at least for western animation. The
design of the movie is inspired by late medieval and early
renaissance art. This can be seen in the elegantly painted
backgrounds, with their harsh angles and weird-shaped trees. This
shows
in the design of all the non-central characters, who’s imagery can
be described as the face cards from a deck
of playing cards.
The
design of central characters seems to be the fulfillment of all the
improvements that Disney’s been making since they started making
feature length films again. Aurora seems to have a similar design
philosophy to Cinderella, where she is an idealization of the perfect
female from her era, but the closer proximity to the 60’s is felt
in her design, particularly in her hair. Prince Phillip is the most
realized a young man has appeared in a Disney film until this time.
His
design is a little generic, but well realized and his animation is
good, which is especially important for all the action scenes that
take up the end of this film. Unlike previous Disney princes, Phillip
has a name and some character, which goes a long way to make him
charming. His charm is necessary, because the audience needs to feel
that him and Aurora belong together despite not knowing each other.
Other princes might get a little more time to establish their
connection to the protagonist, but Phillip really only has one short
scene and a preestablished betrothal.
This
music for this movie is fantastic. I didn’t discover until after
the movie was over and I was researching for this review, but the
music is adapted from the Tchaikovsky ballet of the same name. This
is particularly apparent in the central theme and most memorable song
of this movie, “Once Upon a Dream.” This is a great track that
ties in with the story’s themes of dreams and sleep. It’s also
used to tie Aurora and Phillip together, supporting what I was
discussing before about their relatively short time together. It’s
also just a really memorable track and a return to form for the
Disney theme. It seems that Cinderella was trying to do a similar
thing with “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” but I feel that
it got lost with the other music in that film. The other music in
this movie is also good, but takes a more background role, so it
isn’t as memorable.
From
a narrative perspective, the story is relatively typical fairy tale
fare. Even
more so than some previous Disney films. I think its interesting that
the common perception of Disney Princess stories is some sort of
“Princess is the protagonist, she becomes a damsel in distress,
Prince Charming comes and saves her.” In reality, this is really
the only Disney movie that just
follows that model, with something like Snow
White
just has some light elements of that, like the prince “saving her”
in the very end of the film. Trying to look forward, I believe that
this is the only movie that follows this trope so closely in the
Disney cannon, which suggests this is, in some way, the
quintessential Disney film. I can buy that.
From
a thematic standpoint, there seems to be a weird thing about fate and
the roles that people live into. From the start of the movie, we find
that Phillip and Aurora are meant to be together. Aurora also gets
cursed my Maleficent. This whole scene defines how Aurora’s life is
going to go. It makes sense, this is a movie; a movie’s supposed to
focus onto an interesting story. What makes it interesting is that,
while she’s whisked away, Aurora becomes Briar Rose and almost
literally becomes a different person. Nobody
knows who she is, where she is, she’s free to make her own life.
When she finds out the truth, becomes Aurora and returns to the
castle, the curse immediately takes effect. There is a real feeling
the story portrays that being in hiding did actually protect her and
that the curse was somehow avoidable. A maybe it was, as long as she
remained Briar Rose, but she takes up the role of princess again and
that’s when she gets caught.
This
is also played out in the irony of the romance between Phillip and
Aurora. We know that Aurora and Briar Rose are the same person, but
Phillip doesn’t know they are. He has a whole scene with his father
where he says that he doesn’t want to marry the princess anymore,
because he found a woman in the forest. We
know that they’re the same person. It’s almost some sort of cruel
joke, in that takes a moment of rebellion and it turns out to be for
naught. What would be the chances that they would find each other in
a different context? Slim, but they’re fated to be together, so
they find each other.
Altogether,
this is just a fantastic film. For a long time, my
favorite Disney film was Fantasia,
but now I’d say that its tied with this movie. It is definitely
worth the watch for everyone, even people not interested in
animation. If
you haven’t seen it recently, take the time to check it out again.
After this, we return to another dog film, One
Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Join
us again next week!
-CJ
This week we watched
what I would call Disney’s magnum opus Sleeping Beauty. This
movie has it all; wonderfully styled characters, highly detailed
backgrounds, fantastic animation and great voice acting. This was a
Disney classic that I didn’t see until I was nine or ten, but it
had the most impact on my life when it came to wanting to study
animation. When I had this movie on VHS there was a section at the
end that detailed how the animation process was done, and how much
research and detailing went into the backgrounds. Disney wanted this
film to be a “moving illustration, the ultimate in animation” and
this film certainly hits home.
Like Lady in the
Tramp, there were issues with the release of Sleeping Beauty.
Production on the film was started back in 1951 after the release of
Cinderella, with plans to debut in 1955. However a solid story
couldn’t be decided on, and Walt scrapped much of the early work.
The film was eventually re-written, and production started in earnest
in 1953 – 1954. However, more delays were in store for the film
when the head animator for Sleeping Beauty suffered a heart
attack. Eric Larson, one of the “Nine Old Men,” was promoted to
direct the film. Disney instructed Eric to take as much time as was
needed to animate the film, and pushed back the release for Sleeping
Beauty to 1957. The film may have hit theaters around that time,
however, Walt was out of touch with his animation department and this
led to further delays.
When Sleeping
Beauty finally did hit the big screen it ended up being a
failure. The film itself was the most expensive film Disney film up
to that point, costing the studio about 6 million to produce. The
initial release only ended up grossing $5.3 million, and this
combined with the loss from Alice in Wonderland and the under
performance of Peter Pan and Cinderella led
to massive layoffs throughout the company, and to the death of this
style of animation. Sleeping Beauty did
see a few re-releases after 1970, but it didn’t have much success
until it’s VHS re-release.
The
backgrounds in this film, are possibly my favorite viewing point of
this film. They’re highly stylized and detailed, and pull off the
perfect feel of a medieval setting. I remember watching segments in
the “How
It
Was
Made”
section of Sleeping Beauty
where someone brought back tapestries to the studio, and showed how
they could be incorporated into the film. I
really feel that this was one of the best decisions that the studio
made when it came to producing this film. The backgrounds provide a
very rich and interactive world for our characters to move around in,
and they really end up keeping the viewers eyes glued to the screen.
The wide screen aspect that this film was shot in really helps this
as well. We’re given a lot of open space so our characters aren’t
squashed down into a small box. They have
lots of room to move around and there’s good opportunity to show
just how small or big something is without having to scrap detail on
trees, rocks or other natural land marks. We do lose some details on
our characters, but they’re also detailed just enough so we can see
their movements, and how they’re focused on the screen.
That
being said, let’s take a look at what makes the animation of
Sleeping Beauty so
great. In every Disney film before Sleeping Beauty,
a full live action cast had been used in order to show the animators
how the characters should act and move across the screen. However,
veteran animator Milt Kahl objected to this and refused to continue
this method. He said that, by now, the animators should know how
characters were supposed to move. Very few actors were actually
brought before the animation team. There’s some surviving footage
of Helene Stanley (Aurora)
and Eleanor Audley
(Maleficent) in
their costumes, but other than that, most of the characters were done
without models. I really do feel that this is what makes this movie
truly great. There’s no uncanny valley to
be seen here; it has a life of it’s own and it benefits immensely
from this.
There
were a lot of issues regarding style that plagued this film.
Animators thought that the characters were to flat and cold. The
studio complained to Walt, but he enforced the style. This lead to
more delays as this was not Disney’s traditional style of
animation. Animators had to take extra time on their drawings and
there were claims that due to the style and amount of clean up, only
one or two drawings would make it out per day. This would lead to
about one or two seconds of screen time per month. While I’ve never
animated anything in my life, I can certainly
understand the issues the animators would be facing. Despite
the complaints from the studio, I still think Walt’s overall
decision to keep the film so stylized worked in his favor.
I
can see there being an issue with the animators when it came to
adding shadows and highlights on these characters. Since the
characters are so angled there’s a bit of a limit on what can be
highlighted and what can be shadowed. One half of the face has to be
in shadow and the other lit, or the entire body has to be darkened or
lightened. I don’t feel this puts the film off in anyway, I
actually feel like it works in its favor. It enforces the style of
characters, and the angles and blocks of their faces.
It
almost feels like there doesn’t need to be shadowing in some scenes
simply due to the color schemes. Everyone shown in the film has a
good developed color pallet, that offsets with the backgrounds. This
helps them pop, and they mostly feel like they’re in light all the
time unless there’s a filter thrown on top of them. The only times
it feels like shadow and light are needed are when we have flames or
the glow of the spinning wheel.
There’s
an absolute novel that could be written about this movie, but for
times sake, I’ll cut it here. I really can’t stress enough of
just how beautiful this movie is. It has absolutely everything and I
would say has better animation than Fantasia.
The story, music, animation, and color design is all spot on and it
absolutely baffles
me on how this film failed in theaters. I
doubt anyone reading this hasn’t seen Sleeping Beauty,
but if you’ve never seen this gem of animation, do yourself a favor
and go watch it.
In
it’s own way I really feel that this movie was just ahead of its
time. However, I am very thankful that it came out before the death
of animation, when xerography hit the scenes. I do wonder if Sleeping
Beauty had been more successful
if xerography would have been scrapped by the studio or if it
would’ve been picked up at a later date. We’ll take a deeper look
into xerography next week when we delve into 101
Dalmatians.
-AJ
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