September
12, 2003, 9:00 a.m. Asleep
No Longer Sleeping
Beauty comes home.
By Thomas Hibbs
hat's not to like in a film that contains the line, "Father,
you're living in the past. This is the 14th century"? Disney's restored
DVD version of the 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty is worthy of
note, not just because it provides a welcome contrast to the sort of thoughtless
mediocrity that kids now typically endure at the local metroplex. The
just-released
DVD — which contains informative extras, interactive games, and
the option of wide- or full-screen viewing — impresses upon the viewer
the remarkable stylistic coherence and captivating narrative of Sleeping
Beauty, a film justifiably labeled an animated classic.
The restoration
involved attention to 118,000 separate frames. The result is visually stunning.
Disney had previously restored Snow
White, its first release and the standard by which its subsequent
productions were measured. But Cinderella, which followed Snow
White, sparked some criticism for mimicking the story and style of its
predecessor. At Disney, the original plans for Sleeping Beauty emerged
as early as 1952, yet it was not completed and released until 1959. In the
intervening years and under the stewardship of designer, Eyvind Earle, the
artistry and plot were transformed into something quite different from what
Disney had ever done before. Earl was a student of pre-Renaissance Gothic
art. As he explains in the wonderful commentary track, he wanted the distinct
verticals and horizontals to dominate. He added resonance and depth to the
film through the rich construction of colors and an unparalleled attention
to detail in the background of each scene. For these, the Gothic tapestries
and illuminated manuscripts provided the model. It was also the first (and
last until the 1980s) of the wide-frame Disney productions.
The design finds
a complement in the nuance of characterization and in the marvelous way
in which the plot integrates the comic and the grave. Nearly all the classic
Disney films feature some sort of contest between good and evil, but Sleeping
Beauty ranks at the very top for its complexity of characterization
and its rich symbolism. The good fairies could quite easily have become
saccharine cutouts — imagine three versions of Cinderella's
fairy godmother. But the fairies have distinct personalities. Complexity
is added through comic elements, as in their bumbling attempts, after
having eschewed magic, to make Aurora's birthday cake, whose liquidity
ends up resembling something out of a Salvador Dali painting, and her
gown, which looks like it was custom made to be worn to the Academy Awards.
The artistry of the
bad fairy Maleficent, whose very name means evildoer, is splendid. With
her flowing gown resembling flames, her horns, bat-like wings, and chilling
voice — the same voice as Cinderella's viciously frigid stepmother,
Maleficent is the most serious of Disney villains. When she materializes
from smoke with a green ball propped in her hand, draped in black, with
beady, motionless white eyes, she appears as a confident and mysterious,
demonic figure, a theme she makes explicit just before her final battle
with Philip: "How shall you deal with me, oh prince, and all the
powers of Hell?" As she transforms herself into a giant dragon, the
good fairies provide Philip with a magic sword, "Now, sword of truth,
fly swift and sure, that evil die and good endure." Thus begins a
ferocious battle, which ends with Philip triumphant, Aurora awakened by
"love's first kiss," a royal wedding, and the restoration of
order and peace in the kingdom.
The "once upon
a dream" theme song that runs through the film certainly captures
the story's fantasy and magic. But it does more than that. The song states
that "visions are seldom what they seem" but adds, "if
I know you…I know you'll love me as you did once upon a dream."
Of course, the prince and the princess have met before, as children, when
after Aurora's birth, their parents arranged for their future marriage.
As Prince Philip is sent to the baby girl, the narrator comments, "And
so to her a gift he brought and looked unknowing on his future bride."
But the film is saying something else about dreaming, loving, and remembering.
When they meet as
young adults, it is by chance in the woods near the cottage where the
three fairies have secretly raised Aurora, called Briar Rose. Each thinks
the other is a peasant. The meeting sparks instant love between them and,
since they do not know one another's identities, engenders resistance
to the marriage arranged by their royal parents. Eventually, of course,
they come to recognize that the true object of affection is the person
they have been arranged to wed. The movement from dream anticipated to
dream realized involves a series of trials and tribulations, a journey
that transforms the young into adults and renders them worthy of inheriting
the throne and ruling justly. Thus the film, which has the structure of
a classic Shakespearean comedy, moves toward an integration of arrangement
and consent, politics, and personal affection, the high (the royal) and
the low (the peasant).
The film fulfills
the promise of its opening frames, in which we enter the story through
the pages of an illuminated storybook. We willingly suspend disbelief
as we enter another world, another time, and find ourselves enraptured
by classic themes in the very contemporary medium of film.
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hat's not to like in a film that contains the line, "Father,
you're living in the past. This is the 14th century"? Disney's 
