Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, the production was supervised by Clyde Geronimi, and was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, and Les Clark. With the voices of Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Jo Allen, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson, the film follows Princess Aurora, who was cursed by the evil fairy Maleficent to die from a prick from the spindle of a spinning wheel. She is saved by three good fairies, who alter the curse so that the princess falls into a deep sleep and is awakened by true love's kiss. Sleeping Beauty began development in 1950. The film took nearly a decade and $6 million to produce, and was Disney's most expensive animated feature at the time. Its 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, was 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). It was released in theaters on January 29, 1959, to mixed reviews from critics who praised its art direction and musical score and criticized its plot and characters. The film was a box-office bomb in its initial release, grossing $5.3 million. Sleeping Beauty re-releases have been successful, however, 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. A live-action reimagining of the film from Maleficent's perspective was released in 2014, followed by a sequel in 2019. That year, Sleeping Beauty was selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".