Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Directed by

Eric Larson, Les Clark, Wolfgang Reitherman, Clyde Geronimi

Written by

Erdman Penner

Genre

fantasy film, musical film, family film, cinematic fairy tale

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 15m

Rated

G

Rating

6.9 of 10 from 5,508 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This animated musical tells the story of Princess Aurora who is cursed by an evil fairy to fall into a deep sleep on her sixteenth birthday. Three good fairies try to protect her and a prince must fight to break the spell with true love's kiss.

boldstylizeddramaticromanticbittersweetepicwhimsicalatmospheric

What happens

Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Film Distribution. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, the film follows Princess Aurora, who was cursed by the evil fairy Maleficent to die from pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel on her 16th birthday; she is rescued by three good fairies, who change the curse so that Aurora falls into a deep sleep and will be awakened by true love's kiss. The production was supervised by Clyde Geronimi, and was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, and Les Clark. It features the voices of Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Jo Allen, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson. Sleeping Beauty began development in 1950. The film took nearly a decade and $6 million (equivalent to $66,267,123 in 2025) to produce, and was Disney's most expensive animated feature at the time. The film's tapestry-like art style was devised by Eyvind Earle, who was inspired by pre-Renaissance European art; its score and songs, composed by George Bruns, were based on Pyotr Tchaikovsky's 1889 ballet. Sleeping Beauty was the first animated film to use the Super Technirama 70 widescreen process and was the second full-length animated feature filmed in anamorphic widescreen, following Lady and the Tramp (1955). Sleeping Beauty was released in theaters on January 29, 1959, to mixed reviews from critics. The film was a box-office bomb in its initial release, grossing $5.3 million (equivalent to $58,535,959 in 2025), and losing $900,000 (equivalent to $9,940,068 in 2025) for the distributor. Many employees from the animation studio were laid off. Sleeping Beauty's re-releases have been successful, and it has become one of Disney's most artistically acclaimed features. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture at the 32nd Academy Awards. Maleficent, a live-action reimagining of the film from the eponymous character's perspective, was released in 2014, followed by a sequel in 2019. The latter year, Sleeping Beauty was selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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