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World/Story/Movie Information Sleeping Beauty From the moment it was conceived, the movie Sleeping Beauty was to be a state of the art modern film. Its production team was to utilize only the newest designs, sound, and wide screen capabilities available during the 1950's. At that period of time, critics were beginning to accuse Disney of being too old fashioned and their art style dated. Walt Disney intended to prove them wrong. This was to be Walt Disney's last film he gave his full attention to, but due to scheduling he had to be always for weeks at a time preparing for the grand opening of Disneyland. In tribute he re-named Snow White's Castle to the now famous Sleeping Beauty's Castle. However, this delay and his meticulous attention to detail ended up costing the company $6 million and taking nearly six years to complete. Straight away Walt Disney commissioned his top artist to work on the project and game them all the time they needed to perfect every aspect of the picture. The key artist even did most of the in-betweening and preliminary clean up on their scenes. They were sent to grocery stores to observe old women's interactions with each other to get ideas for the three fairies. The backgrounds were done in a radical angular style based on Russian folklore to give it a medieval feel. They were so richly detailed audiences complained the main characters were too plain. Lastly Walt Disney wanted to base the entire musical score on Tchaikovsky's beloved 1889 "Sleeping Beauty Ballet". At first the composers felt it would "bog down" the film, but Walt insisted it be used. Upon the films release, audiences and critics gave it mixed reviews. Some thought the artwork and sound quality was too rich for a simple fairy tale, while others believed it was too frightening for children. It grossed only $5.3 million and combined with the cost of production, almost ran the studio into bankruptcy. Today it is hailed as one of the most accomplished films in movie history grossing over $55 million in the US alone. |
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