Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Directed by Clyde Geronimi
Cursed to die by the evil fairy Maleficent when she was a baby, Princess Aurora is sent into hiding under protection from three good fairies. As she grows up far away, Maleficent becomes increasingly determined to seal the princess's fate.
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What critics compared Sleeping Beauty to
Everything is here from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), to the black brambles of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959), to references to the Friday the 13th and Halloween series — and, of course, the requisite zombie tropes.
Directed by first-time helmer Robert Stromberg from a script credited to “Beauty and the Beast” scribe Linda Woolverton, the film has a clever enough big-picture take on the “Sleeping Beauty” tale, yet it sputters and snags as it tries construct a coherent emotional arc, and its reference points from the 1959 animated original feel more dutiful than inspired.
Sure, she chews the scenery in some scenes, going over the top, but it is these moments where she’s paying homage to the original performance in 1959’s “Sleeping Beauty,” so I can forgive a bit of overacting there.
There’s a telling scene toward the beginning of Maleficent, a revisionist retelling of Sleeping Beauty from Disney, the same studio that made the classic fairy tale famous again with its animated version in 1959.
Translation: Expect some fundamental changes to the legend most people know from either Charles Perrault's original fairy tale La Belle au bois dormant or Disney's 1959 animated version Sleeping Beauty.
A fairy godmother is a fairy whom your parents invited to witness your christening, like the three fairies in Sleeping Beauty (at least, it’s a christening in the fairy tale by Charles Perrault).
(In Disney's 1950s Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, both the Stepmother and Maleficent were voiced by Eleanor Audley.)
Maleficent , of course, is telling the story of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of its presumed villain, yet the film’s highlight is the scene where Angelina Jolie’s horned fairy places a curse on baby Aurora, the dialogue matching up with the 1959 original.
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“The Little Mermaid” is the first animated fairy tale to surface from the Disney studio since “Sleeping Beauty” in 1959.
Sleeping Beauty would be the last Disney feature with fully hand-inked cels, and the last fairy tale princess movie until 1989’s The Little Mermaid .
Beauty’s hugely successful Disney live action predecessor, Maleficent, reimagined Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of the iconic 1959 villain (Angelina Jolie).
Catch me in a good mood, and I'd call it the most straight-up gorgeous animated movie since Disney's 1959 Sleeping Beauty ; in a more objective state, I would see fit to drop it below The Lion King and a handful of Studio Ghibli pictures, at least.
From its beautiful handdrawn images to the three-dimensional computer-generated work, all shot in the 2.35:1 CinemaScope aspect ratio (the first animated feature to be shot so since 1959's Sleeping Beauty), Anastasia truly looks and feels like an epic even when the goings-on are less so.