Sleeping Beauty 720p - (1959 Lang: English)

A Disney classic!

When I was a little girl, Sleeping Beauty was my all time favorite Disney film. I was so in love with this story, it's crazy how many times I wore out the VHS. But growing up, I lost touch with the story, but I recently bought the DVD and re-watched the film and you know what? I'm still in love with this movie. I really miss these old Disney movies where the animation was so bright and beautiful, the characters were so lovable, and the story was so magical. I'm not bashing Disney films from today, just I'm sure we could all relate on this subject where the older Disney films just had a certain charm about it. Sleeping Beauty is just a timeless story and has so much wonderful romance, I guess since I'm a girl, I just couldn't help but still be in love with this beautiful story.

Princess Aurora is born and is the future queen of her land, three fairy's, Flora, Merryweather, and Fauna bless her with three gifts: beauty and song, right as Merryweather is about to bless Aurora, the evil witch, Maleficent, comes in and curses Aurora that she shall touch a spinning wheel by her 16th birthday and die! Merryweather changes it to where she won't die, but sleep and could only be woke up by the kiss of true love. The fairy's wish to keep this from happening still, so they take Aurora and raise her as their own. One day Aurora on her 16th birthday goes out in the forest and meets the charming and handsome Prince Phillipe, but she doesn't know he's a prince and she doesn't know he's fhe man she's actually betrothed too. She is told by the fairy's that she can never see him again and that she's a princess; later that night the curse happens! Now the fairy's need Phillipe to save Aurora before it's too late.

Everything about Sleeping Beauty is just a perfect Disney film and I can't wait until to show this to my future kids one day. I know that their generation is going to have just the CGI animation, so it's good that at least we still have these films, they're treasures. The voices, the animation, the story, Sleeping Beauty is the most romantic fairy tale that anyone could easily fall in love with. If you are a Disney fan, this is a must see, it's a great family film or if you're just a film buff in general, I'm a grown up and I still tear up when I watch Sleeping Beauty.

Sleeping Beauty is an American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney based on The Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault. The 16th Disney animated feature film, it was released to theaters on January 29, 1959, by Buena Vista Distribution. This was the last Disney adaptation of a fairy tale for some years because of its initial mixed critical reception and underperformance at the box office; the studio did not return to the genre until 30 years later, after Walt Disney died in 1966, with the release of The Little Mermaid (1989).

It features the voices of Mary Costa, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Jo Allen, Bill Shirley, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson.

The film was directed by Les Clark, Eric Larson, and Wolfgang Reitherman, under the supervision of Clyde Geronimi, with additional story work by Joe Rinaldi, Winston Hibler, Bill Peet, Ted Sears, Ralph Wright, and Milt Banta. The film's musical score and songs, featuring the work of the Graunke Symphony Orchestra under the direction of George Bruns, are arrangements or adaptations of numbers from the 1890 Sleeping Beauty ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Along with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Igor Stravinsky's music composition was also popular in the film. However, unlike the previous feature-films, this was the first Disney feature-film that did not have the same background animation material, but instead with new background animation material.

Sleeping Beauty was the first animated film to be photographed in the Super Technirama 70 widescreen process, as well as the second full-length animated feature film to be filmed in anamorphic widescreen, following Disney's own Lady and the Tramp four years earlier. The film was presented in Super Technirama 70 and 6-channel stereophonic sound in first-run engagements.

After many childless years, King Stefan and Queen Leah happily welcome the birth of their daughter, the Princess Aurora. They proclaim a holiday for their subjects to pay homage to the princess, and at the gathering for her christening she is betrothed to Prince Phillip, the young son of Stefan's friend King Hubert, so that their kingdoms will always be united.

Among the guests are three good fairies called Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, who have come to bless the child with gifts, beauty and song. Before Merryweather is able to give her blessing, the evil fairy Maleficent appears, only to be told she was unwanted. Maleficent turns to leave, but when Queen Leah asks if she's offended, the evil fairy curses the princess, proclaiming that Aurora will grow in grace and beauty, but before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. King Stefan and Queen Leah are horrified and beg the three good fairies to break the curse. Unfortunately, they are not strong enough to break it, but Merryweather uses her blessing to weaken the curse so that instead of dying, Aurora will fall into a death-like sleep from which she can only be awakened by true love's kiss. King Stefan, still fearful for his daughter's life, orders all spinning wheels in the kingdom to be burned. The fairies do not believe that will be enough to keep Aurora safe, and so they spirit baby Aurora away to a woodcutter's cottage in the forest until the day of her sixteenth birthday.

Years later, Aurora, renamed Briar Rose, has grown into a beautiful teenage girl. On the day of her sixteenth birthday, the three fairies ask Rose to gather berries in the forest so they can prepare a surprise party for her. Rose is friends with the animals of the forest and sings them a song, Once Upon a Dream. While singing in the forest, Rose attracts the attention of Prince Phillip, now a handsome young man. He races to find the owner of the beautiful voice and is instantly struck by Rose's grace and beauty. Rose at first is frightened at the sudden appearance of the stranger, but Philip soon puts her at ease. They instantly fall in love, unaware of being betrothed years ago. Rose asks Phillip to come to her cottage that evening.

While she is out, Flora and Merryweather argue about the color of Aurora's ballgown. They fight, attracting the attention of Maleficent's raven and revealing the location of Aurora. Back at home, Briar Rose is thrilled to tell her guardians she met a man and fell in love. The fairies tell Aurora the truth about her heritage, that she is a princess and already betrothed, and tell her she must never see the man she met again. Heartbroken, she leaves the room. Meanwhile, Phillip tells his father of a peasant girl he met and wishes to marry in spite of his prearranged marriage to Princess Aurora. King Hubert fails to convince him otherwise, leaving Hubert in equal disappointment.

The fairies take Aurora back to the castle and leave her alone in a room to wait for her birthday celebrations where she will finally get to see her parents. Maleficent then appears and magically lures Aurora away from the fairies and tricks the princess into touching an enchanted spinning wheel. Aurora pricks her finger, completing the curse. The good fairies place Aurora on a bed in the highest tower and place a powerful spell on all the people in the kingdom, causing them to fall in a deep sleep until the spell on their princess is broken. While doing so, they overhear a conversation between the two kings. From King Hubert's conversation with King Stefan, the fairies realize that Prince Phillip is the man with whom Aurora has fallen in love. They rush to find him, but he is kidnapped by Maleficent who is waiting for him at the cottage in the woods. She shows Phillip the peasant girl he fell in love with is the now-sleeping princess. She tells him she plans to keep him locked away until he's an old man on the verge of death, then release him to meet his love, who will not have aged a single day.

The fairies find and release the prince, arming him with the magical Sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue. Maleficent tries to stop Phillip by surrounding Aurora's castle with thorns but fails. She then transforms into a gigantic dragon to battle the prince herself. Ultimately, Phillip throws the sword, blessed by the fairies' magic, directly into Maleficent's heart, causing her to fall to her death.

Phillip awakens Aurora with a kiss, breaking the spell and thereby wakes everyone in the palace. The royal couple descends to the ballroom, where Aurora is happily reunited with her parents, while King Hubert is confused of how the two young royals met. Flora and Merryweather resume their argument over the color of Aurora's ball gown, magically changing it from blue to pink while the happy couple waltzes. The last color to appear is pink. Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip live happily ever after.

In its scale, beauty, and dramatic power, Sleeping Beauty stands as (I think at least) the pinnacle of Disney's animated features. While in terms of cultural significance, it holds a second tiara to Snow White and Fantasia, it is set apart by its richly detailed, groundbreaking expressionistic design. The Disney animators had decidedly moved away from the European storybook feel of its 30's and 40's triumphs with Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Lady and the Tramp (1955), yet it was Sleeping Beauty that was the most radical departure. With its $6 million budget, the film has an epic sweep and scope never before achieved in animation. From the crowds of celebrators in the beginning to the tremendous size of King Richard's throne room, it achieves a tremendous feel of space and depth pioneered by the multi-plane work in Snow White and Fantasia. The film shows many other applications of the lessoned learned from the great experiment of Fantasia, particularly the remarkable scene of the three fairies bestowing their gifts on the infant princess. The camera pans up and off into dreamy, surreal vignettes slightly reminiscent of Fantasia's "Toccata in Fugue" segment. Its one of animation's finest moments.

Yet what surely is the most memorable element of this film in the eyes of many viewers is its villain, the Marc Davis creation, Maleficent. Voiced by longtime Disney staple Eleanor Audley, she is easily Disney's most overtly evil villain. Davis' brilliant streamlined design exudes of an infernal elegance (complete with demonic horns). She carries a royal nobility that only adds to her ambiguous, sinister nature as well as to her dramatic presence. She slanders and cackles and proclaims her evil decrees with such bile and disgust it's almost overwhelming. In the final conflict between Prince Phillip, she cries out in utter fury, "Now shall you deal with me, o prince, and all the powers of hell!" Lightning cracks, smoke gathers and Maleficent rises, now changed into a fire-breathing dragon. It is one of Disney's most daring moments and very well one of its finest. Sleeping Beauty is a masterpiece, a tremendous artistic triumph from one of Hollywood's most successful and prolific studios. Its artistry, dramatic power, and compelling performances stand it along side the great American films of the decade, which is a fact not stated often enough.

"You know, sometimes I don't think she's very happy."