Sleeping Beauty (1959/Disney Platinum Edition Blu-ray Set)
Picture:
A- Sound: B- Extras: B Film: B
At the
peak of his powers and the remarkable expansion of his empire with theme parks,
Walt Disney decided to take on yet another fairy tale classic. Sleeping
Beauty (1959) had all the elements he could make into a major animated
feature, even if some of the dark elements would be emphasized more than
usual. It was a maturing of the empire
and of their brand of work as other companies caught up with their own
interesting animated shorts and product, but Disney was still several steps
ahead of them and this would be yet another building block of the House of
Mouse.
The tale
of the newborn daughter of a kingdom “once upon a time” cursed by eternal sleep
unless she is saved is done with such elaboration that it is unlike any other
animated feature in history, pushing what you could do with a widescreen frame
and in the early days of such filmmaking, a groundbreaker for compositions in
such a new kind of canvas. With great
moments of comedy, magic battles, a lush other world and characters we can
relate to, the film is not often given the credit for being the Fantasy genre
classic it is, but even the recent Lord
Of The Rings trilogy would be unthinkable without it.
Despite
the precautions taken, the evil Maleficent (modeled to look like Joan Crawford
at her Film Noir evilest) has created the curse that only a brave Prince
Phillip can save Princess Aurora from a fate of eternal sleep. In the brilliant all-time classic climax when
Maleficent becomes a murderous dragon, Disney hired no less than the brilliant
British animation team of John Halas and Joy Batchelor (whose animated
adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal
Farm in 1954 was a groundbreaker for mature, dark animated features) to
create The Dragon, making it stand out against all the other animation in the
film. The resulting impact turned out to
be one of Walt Disney’s greatest gambits, leading to one of the most memorable
climaxes in Disney history.
Beside
the British and other major studios making their inroads to animation, his
former employees who left and formed the innovative UPA Studios (United
Productions of America) had created their own innovations in minimalism and
commercial applications of animation had been influencing the industry for many
years. Disney found a way to apply some
of that minimalist sense here in a way UPA could never afford to do. The film has been criticized for lack of
character development, though my criticism is that it should have been longer
the its 75 minutes, but some of those critics wanted the film to be as
Disney-friendly as possible (read comfortable) like all of his previous films,
but Walt Disney knew he had to push the boundaries of the artform he helped to
create into new directions, no mater how uncharted or different that may
play. Instead, he sowed the seeds for
movements like Anime with this film by creating new animated cinematic space
here and while continuing to dominate in the departments of visual effects and
animation until his passing, Sleeping
Beauty is the peak of everything he and his company stood for and (with
Pixar) does all over again. How great it
is then that the film has been saved!
The 1080p
2.55 X 1 image has an interesting story behind it. This full widescreen aspect ratio for the
film has never been seen because by the time the film was released despite the
fact that it is the widest screen animated feature ever made, plus that original
shape of CinemaScope would be cut down to 2.35 X 1 by the time the film arrived
in theaters (still with us today all the way to Super 35) and was intended to
follow Lady & The Tramp (1955)
as the second widescreen animated feature with one major quality upgrade.
Instead
of using the original 2-lens CinemaScope system, Disney would use the
mirror/prism Delrama system (which does not have the distortion inherent in
usual anamorphic lenses) to squeeze the animation images on larger frames of
35mm film similar to VistaVision. The
combination was Technirama, invented by Technicolor labs, a close ally of
Disney. When the film started, it would
come out in 2.55 X 1 35mm prints only, but as 35mm was shortened, the labs
found a way to produce 70mm prints and Beauty
not only became the first Technirama film to have 70mm prints, but became the
first ever 70mm animated film by default.
After
much research, the restoration team at Disney decided that 2.55 was the
original aspect ratio and it is a Blu-ray exclusive, while the bonus DVD here
and all previous widescreen versions are just 2.35 X 1. It is had to confirm how many if any 2.55 X 1
35mm prints were made in 1959 as hat aspect ratio for CinemaScope was finished
via the need to add an optical soundtrack to prints, but it is ironic that
clearer, sharper 70mm copies had even less cel information. A new archival print was reportedly struck in
1997, the first year of the three-strip dye-transfer Technicolor revival that
lasted until 2001, but it is unknown as of this posting if it was such a print
or if it was 2.55 X 1.
In the
case animated features done in three-strip dye-transfer Technicolor prints at
the time, especially by Disney, used the successive shot process (that Disney
himself helped to innovate) where you prepare the cel which is filmed a few
frames at a time in any case. For
three-strip, instead of having a camera running the three black and white
color-coded strips at the same time for live action, the camera would take a
few frames of each cel in the three different basic colors one behind the
other, then the cel would be altered, and the process would be repeated. Disney would use this process for all their
animated features until Robin Hood
in 1973.
For this
restoration, there is a digital version, sort of. They have taken the original camera materials
(fragile as they may be) and slowly put it through a computer at 4K digital
resolution, recreating the film in its entirety and at the original aspect
ratio for the first time in 50 years.
The result is a very impressive transfer with very few flaws and since
the Disney people had to paint the cels to be like real Technicolor, the
results are very impressive with little to hold it back. The only issues diehard fans of the film and
the dye-transfer process will rightly argue is that there is some slight motion
blur here and as good as the digital is, it cannot compete with the full color
range and beauty of a real three-strip print.
The good news is, whenever Technicolor revives the dye-transfer process,
this film will be ready to go.
The DTS HD
7.1 Master Audio (MA 48 kHz/24-bit) lossless track is good for its age, derived
from the original three-track original soundmaster recordings, all of which
were brought into the digital realm then worked on from there. The music sounds good and the sound elements
are more detailed and articulate than ever, showing just how ahead of his time
Disney was. However, this still shows
its age and like most films prior to the mid-1970s, the multi-track sound was
restricted to being behind the screen.
The fun with that here is the travelling dialogue and sound effects you
get through the film. Between the sound
and picture innovations here, Disney was determined to stay ahead of every
studio not just in Hollywood, but in animation and this would be the peak of
those efforts. Disney remained king for
years to follow and the studio is still the top today for animation, simply
because he was not only never afraid to embrace new technology, but was willing
to take it places with ambition and enthusiasm rarely matched in all of cinema
history. Sleeping Beauty was the equivalent of him reaching the moon and
that Magic Kingdom flag planted continues to fly high. When you see this film on Blu-ray, you’ll see
why.
Extras
are many, including all the DVD extras as reviewed elsewhere on this site. The Blu-ray even includes a single bonus DVD,
as well as BD Live features, never before seen alternate opening, sharp new
feature length audio commentary by John Lassiter, all-new Cine-Explore
Experience, all-new Maleficent’s Challenge Game, all-new Dragon Encounter Audio
Sensory Experience and a colorful paperboard sleeve that the Blu-ray case is
inserted into.
If only
more cinema classics received this kind of treatment, but Disney cares to treat
their prized catalog like this and have set a new high industry standard for
others to follow, especially in a rich new format like Blu-ray. Let’s hope they repeat this with their other
animated classics. In the meantime, Sleeping Beauty is a must-own Blu-ray
and one of the top back catalog titles in the format for many years to come.
- Nicholas Sheffo
