The One That Hailed the End of an Era
By the mid 50s, Walt was exhausted. Ever since Pinocchio, a new film had been released every single year, bar one break in 1952. The construction of Disneyland was now taking up most of Walt’s time, especially while it’s opening day was getting closer and, while Lady & the Tramp had been the most successful film they had done in 20 years, it was time for the animation studio to have a breather, at least, from making animated films. The animation department was still very active in the 50s and several animated films were in pre - production, so after the success of Cinderella, Walt decided to bring the studio back to its roots again with another fairy tale to recapture the magic of Snow White. Thus, he set his sights on one of the most beloved fairy tales in fairy tale history.
Shortly after Cinderella came out, Disney began working on an adaptation of the classic 14th century fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault, centred around a princess cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for 100 years, with a prince’s kiss being the only thing that can wake her. However, as beloved as this story was, and still is, there’s one problem: It’s only about 5 paragraphs long, if that, and the heroine slept for two thirds of it. So, in what is still the loosest of all adaptations in Disney history, Sleeping Beauty would retain the skeleton of the fairy tale, but expand on the narrative of the main character, to give her more to do than nap.
THE STORY
In 14th century Russia, princess Aurora is born to King Stefan and Queen Leah. Then a great holiday is proclaimed, and the whole kingdom comes to the christening. The most honoured and exhalted guests are Stefan’s neighbour King Hubert, his son Philip; and the three good fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. Each fairy gives one gift. Flora, the gift of beauty, Fauna, the gift of song. Just as Merryweather is about to give her gift, the Mistress of All Evil herself, Maleficent, who had not been invited, arrives. Out of pure spite and pride, Maleficent prophesys that before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Luckily, Merryweather still has her gift to give, though her powers are nowhere near enough to undo those of Maleficent, but she at least softens the curse, so that Aurora will prick her finger, but fall sleep instead of die, and only her true love’s kiss can awaken her. To protect his daughter further, King Stefan commands every spinning wheel in the kingdom burned, and the three fairies plan to hide the princess away in the forest for sixteen years and never tell her who she really is; until the right time. Does this plan work? I would not DARE spoil it.
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So, the film is a huge expansion of the fairy tale. The main character does much more than sleep, the antagonist is named, and she appears in more than one scene. Just like in Snow White, the filmmakers saw the need for a central female villain to create chaos throughout the film. Such was Maleficent, who hunts Aurora all her life to see her evil prophecy fulfilled. The writers also saw that a cinematic ending and a true romance was needed, so it was determined that while she was in hiding, Aurora and Philip would meet by chance and (very quickly) fall in love before the finale. Perrault’s fairy tale also has a fairly creepy prologue whereby the prince’s mother turns out to be an ogre who demands that Aurora’s two children be killed and cooked, and when the prince finds out about this sadistic plan, she hurls herself into a tub of snakes that eat her alive…. CRIKEY…
It was typical to take a while developing scripts, but the final draft was completed in 1952 and Walt planned to release the whole thing in ’55. But by mid ’53, director Wilfred Jackson had gotten together some story reels and complete preliminary animation, but Walt was unsatisfied with the direction the film was taking. And when Wilfred had a heart attack in December, Old Man Eric Larson took over directing and the release date was pushed back to February ’57, which wouldn’t even be the last change of release date. Since Sleeping Beauty shared so many narrative elements with the other two Princesses, Walt chose to make the design aesthetic completely unique and original, and after art director John Hench saw the 16th century unicorn tapestries at the Met Museum of Art in New York, he brought reproductions to Walt, who was so taken that he told the team to use it as inspiration for the film, saying he wanted a moving tapestry. Walt also decided to film Sleeping Beauty on 70mm format, which gave greater resolution and clarity to what it screened. And he knew the film would need a LOT of detailing for both background and character design so, in a first for the studio, the background artist would also become the film’s artistic director, namely the genius Eyvind Earle, who had only been with the studio as a background painer for the last three years. Earle combined his own personal flair with medieval and art deco designs with some inspiration from the painters of the French Renaissance. And what he ended up with is still some of the most detailed and stunning creations in Disney history. He worked almost exclusively alone, drawing ornate tapestries, banners, rocks, bricks and dozens of trees and plants over five years.
Walt specifically demanded that Sleeping Beauty be the “ultimate in animation", and he cared nothing for how long the process might take. Understandable, since he’d seen what rushing a production could do with the package films and he refused to let Sleeping Beauty share that fate and the film was postponed three more times, allowing the animators to meet Walt’s standards; and Eyvind Earle’s. Because Walt instructed his guys to draw characters that matched Earle’s medieval backgrounds for a more cohesive aesthetic, this resulted in heated discussions between Earle and the animators, most of which Earle won, so the guys had to adjust to a new style of animation. There were exceptions, but mostly Earle was completely right to go this route.
Much like Fantasia, this film is a brilliant example of animation fused with classical music; in this case, a ballet. Though it wasn’t always Walt’s plan; early on, he brought in Jack Lawrence and Sammy Fain to compose an original score and several songs. But in ’53, he changed his mind and decided to adapt the music of the ballet, which rendered all of Lawrence and Fain’s previous work redundant, save for one song which ended up being the most famous song in the film.
Finally, on January 29, 1959, Sleeping Beauty opened almost four years after it’s originally planned release date. It was shown in both standard 35mm and 70mm prints with the latter equipped with six-track stereophonic sound. The critics were mixed, but the people gave it $5.3 million in theatre rentals, making it the second-highest-grossing film that year, after Ben-Hur. Nonetheless, however, the film didn’t make back it’s budget of $6 million and it was dubbed an initial failure, resulting in layoffs and a complete change in animation tactics for the future. In this, this film is the true end of an animation era. It would be thirty years before the next princess film, no future film from Disney would ever be that expensive again. Production times were cut, and animators were encouraged to produce their work cheaper and more quickly. Plus Walt’s years of chain - smoking were starting to affect his health. So nothing was ever the same after Sleeping Beauty.
MY VERDICT
So this one may be my number one favourite Disney film of all time, certainly my favourite of the princess films. The animation is above judgement, the music is just sublime, and the voice cast is PERFECT.
But also, on a personal note, I have very fond memories of watching this film multiple times with my grandmother, and having very, for lack of a better term, ANIMATED discussions with her about the colours and names of the fairies. I always thought that Merryweather was in green, but she insisted, rightly that she was in blue.
Is Sleeping Beauty a Disney Classic? I literally don’t think you could call it anything else.
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