Mike D'Angelo - Sleeping Beauty (1959, Clyde Geronimi)
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57/100
Don't believe I'd ever seen this before, incredibly. (Wasn't yet on home video when I was little, and the timing of its theatrical re-releases were off for me, as I was only two years old the first time, already 11 and probably no longer interested the second time.) Nothing seemed familiar apart from what one picks up via cultural osmosis (plus seeing Maleficent), and there are plenty of things that I'm sure would have stuck with me, given what I've remembered of late from movies I saw exactly once at age seven. Also somehow hadn't previously realized that Sleeping Beauty was in production so long that its famous castle was completed at Disneyland and Disney started using it as a logo several years prior to the movie's release.
You can definitely see years' worth of intensive labor in the animation, which is spectacular (if less arresting to my eyes than Pinocchio's, in terms of depth and shading; there's a flatness to Sleeping Beauty's backgrounds that seems to foreshadow subsequent Disney-produced mediocrity). As ever (and to the perpetual amusement of some folks), I feel obligated to remind y'all that I don't see some colors correctly and so am less likely to be truly bowled over by an eye-popping palette, though I did marvel at the three good fairies repeatedly transforming themselves into flying sprite-like circles of red, green and blue (and had no difficulty telling red and green apart; rarely do, actually). Disney's animators always excelled at darkness and went to town on the Forbidden Mountain, both exterior and interior; for all the splendiferous richness of most scenes (particularly those in the forest, which looks round and inviting when Briar Rose hangs out with her animal friends and turns angular and forbidding later on), my favorite moment in the film consists of virtually no visual information, as Aurora (now again called) slowly climbs a winding staircase barely illuminated by Maleficent's hypnotic ball of light leading her way, with 95% of the frame ultimately swallowed up in pitch-black darkness. Magnificently chilling effect.
As I noted regarding The Girl Without Hands, however, no amount of stunning animation can keep me from feeling frustrated with a feature-length narrative that doesn't provide those images with compelling context. Sleeping Beauty, of course, likewise originated as a fairy tale that would occupy less than 10 minutes of screen time if told without invented curlicues; here, the writers and animators fill time with irrelevant and to my mind not very funny tomfoolery like a random lute player who drinks himself unconscious while the two kings discuss their kids' forthcoming wedding. The larger issue, though, is that there's no real protagonist. The title character necessarily winds up in a death coma (or whatever), so the story can't really be structured from her perspective. Prince Phillip doesn't show up until halfway through. By default, we're primarily allied with the three fairies, whose personalities don't go much beyond two of them constantly fighting over pink vs. blue—these would be fun minor supporting characters in any other Disney feature, and far too much weight gets placed upon them here. And the need to (again) kill some time with extraneous comic business sees them ineptly struggle to perform, sans magic, basic tasks like sewing a dress and baking a cake, which inadvertently raises the unwanted question of exactly how they've managed to successfully raise Briar Rose for the past 16 years. Have they been going to Walmart? Only thing that struck me as narratively inventive and refreshing was the animals stealing Phillip's clothes and transforming the owl into a prince.
Oh, and call me churlish but I also feel compelled to observe that there's no point in casting an evil curse/prophecy involving a fatal spinning wheel if you eventually need to evil-magically conjure said spinning wheel yourself. (Perrault's really to blame for this; earlier variations were less contrived.) Might as well just announce "Sometime before this bitch turns 16 I'mma fuck her up" and leave it at that. No need to box yourself in.
ANAL-RETENTIVE CREDIT CORNER: Technically speaking, many of the early Disney animated features don't have a standard-issue director. In this case, for example, Clyde Geronimi was "Supervising Director" and three other people were "Sequence Directors." You could make a case for citing all four, but that approach opens a can of worms. Should Tarantino be credited as a director of Frank Miller's Sin City? After all, he directed one sequence. I've always chosen to treat "Supervising Director" as functionally equivalent to plain old "Director"—that was the individual in charge.
(Yes, that in turn opens a can of worms about Selznick, but fuck it.)
57/100
Don't believe I'd ever seen this before, incredibly. (Wasn't yet on home video when I was little, and the timing of its theatrical re-releases were off for me, as I was only two years old the first time, already 11 and probably no longer interested the second time.) Nothing seemed familiar apart from what one picks up via cultural osmosis (plus seeing Maleficent), and there are plenty of things that I'm sure would have stuck with me, given what I've remembered of late from movies I saw exactly once at age seven. Also somehow hadn't previously realized that Sleeping Beauty was in production so long that its famous castle was completed at Disneyland and Disney started using it as a logo several years prior to the movie's release.
You can definitely see years' worth of intensive labor in the animation, which is spectacular (if less arresting to my eyes than Pinocchio's, in terms of depth and shading; there's a flatness to Sleeping Beauty's backgrounds that seems to foreshadow subsequent Disney-produced mediocrity). As ever (and to the perpetual amusement of some folks), I feel obligated to remind y'all that I don't see some colors correctly and so am less likely to be truly bowled over by an eye-popping palette, though I did marvel at the three good fairies repeatedly transforming themselves into flying sprite-like circles of red, green and blue (and had no difficulty telling red and green apart; rarely do, actually). Disney's animators always excelled at darkness and went to town on the Forbidden Mountain, both exterior and interior; for all the splendiferous richness of most scenes (particularly those in the forest, which looks round and inviting when Briar Rose hangs out with her animal friends and turns angular and forbidding later on), my favorite moment in the film consists of virtually no visual information, as Aurora (now again called) slowly climbs a winding staircase barely illuminated by Maleficent's hypnotic ball of light leading her way, with 95% of the frame ultimately swallowed up in pitch-black darkness. Magnificently chilling effect.
As I noted regarding The Girl Without Hands, however, no amount of stunning animation can keep me from feeling frustrated with a feature-length narrative that doesn't provide those images with compelling context. Sleeping Beauty, of course, likewise originated as a fairy tale that would occupy less than 10 minutes of screen time if told without invented curlicues; here, the writers and animators fill time with irrelevant and to my mind not very funny tomfoolery like a random lute player who drinks himself unconscious while the two kings discuss their kids' forthcoming wedding. The larger issue, though, is that there's no real protagonist. The title character necessarily winds up in a death coma (or whatever), so the story can't really be structured from her perspective. Prince Phillip doesn't show up until halfway through. By default, we're primarily allied with the three fairies, whose personalities don't go much beyond two of them constantly fighting over pink vs. blue—these would be fun minor supporting characters in any other Disney feature, and far too much weight gets placed upon them here. And the need to (again) kill some time with extraneous comic business sees them ineptly struggle to perform, sans magic, basic tasks like sewing a dress and baking a cake, which inadvertently raises the unwanted question of exactly how they've managed to successfully raise Briar Rose for the past 16 years. Have they been going to Walmart? Only thing that struck me as narratively inventive and refreshing was the animals stealing Phillip's clothes and transforming the owl into a prince.
Oh, and call me churlish but I also feel compelled to observe that there's no point in casting an evil curse/prophecy involving a fatal spinning wheel if you eventually need to evil-magically conjure said spinning wheel yourself. (Perrault's really to blame for this; earlier variations were less contrived.) Might as well just announce "Sometime before this bitch turns 16 I'mma fuck her up" and leave it at that. No need to box yourself in.
ANAL-RETENTIVE CREDIT CORNER: Technically speaking, many of the early Disney animated features don't have a standard-issue director. In this case, for example, Clyde Geronimi was "Supervising Director" and three other people were "Sequence Directors." You could make a case for citing all four, but that approach opens a can of worms. Should Tarantino be credited as a director of Frank Miller's Sin City? After all, he directed one sequence. I've always chosen to treat "Supervising Director" as functionally equivalent to plain old "Director"—that was the individual in charge.
(Yes, that in turn opens a can of worms about Selznick, but fuck it.)
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