![]() Made with a bigger budget, more time and more resources, Walt Disney‘s second full-length feature is at least as stunning as its predecessor it’s the only picture that can give Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a run for its money for the title of greatest animated film of all time. This is Disney's first film photographed in an ultra-widescreen format (the Super Technirama 70 frame was over twice as wide as that of early Disney classics like Snow White). To experience the finale where Maleficent (a menacing villain who makes slashers look like punks) casts a spell that covers a castle in acres of thorns, then transform herself into a dragon the size of a skyscraper-all set to the thunderous, swirling, brass-heavy Tchaikovsky-infused orchestral score-is to fully appreciate one of the most spectacularly realized and exciting action-adventure set pieces ever staged. Frankly, when the artistry is this jaw-droppingly great, who cares? Some say Aurora doesn't have as much personality as other Disney leads, and some say the 75-minute film has a thin narrative. Under the art direction of Eyvind Earle, Sleeping Beauty is a labor-intensive high-point for this medium. Watch it today on a huge screen, with rich sound. The less said about the campy-financially successful, but featherweight-2017 remake, the better.įor a generation or more, Disney's most ambitious and expensive (at the time) effort was only seen on VHS, cropped and incomplete. The soundtrack album was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys. Beauty and the Beast went on to become the first animated film to gross $100 million in the United States, nominated for six Oscars. Only 70 percent of the animation was finished, so the audience saw 30 percent crude pencil drawings paired with the soundtrack, and nevertheless, by all accounts, it received an historically rapturous reception, with cheers throughout, and a 10-minute standing ovation. Taking a cue from the 1946 French masterwork La Belle et La Bête, benefiting enormously from the songs of Ashman/Menken, this is a landmark.įor some perspective, the film was first shown to an audience in September 1991 at the New York Film Festival, in an unfinished “work print” cut. The second film in the Disney Renaissance is an even more refined, dramatically punchy film than The Little Mermaid. ![]()
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